(48) Star Trek: Discovery is Truly God Awful (Spoilers)
A little afield, but interesting, in that this guy clearly shows just how involved the left gets in trying to make any vehicle a propaganda piece, and why the new ST series is actually extremely racist, bigoted and a clear violation of all they keep crying over.
SOURCE URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBb0hyuIfYQ
I'm not waiting any longer. I am creating my own story arc, just to show a society built on "replicators" as it comes crashing down when people forget how to keep them up, etc.
Whittaker Chambers was wrong. Ayn Rand did not "plump for a technocratic elite." She came down hard against all elites--against all who thought they could made decisions for others and enforce those decisions without the consent of those others. In the Borg you see the logical endpoint of a technocratic elite--or rather, of the mind-set of a technocratic elite, coupled with a technology, offered as a cure, with the power to enslave.
But the SJW agenda became part and parcel of Star Trek with the Next Generation show. Picard, on two separate occasions, tells denizens of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that the scarcity economy is obsolete and no one has to work for a living. When Captain Kirk told Korob and Sylvia (S02E08, "Catspaw") that "we run these [precious gemstones] off by the ton!", you could overlook that. But not "In our time, men spend their time improving their minds, not their wealth." Then, too, the Ferengi are a very travesty and caricature of capitalists and capitalism. And now, as the original videographer says, the Klingons are now become a proxy for Afrikaners and American Southern whites!
But--oh, have I plans. I plan to retell the story of the American Revolution, set 400 years into the future, from several points-of-view. Including an autistic savant who finds himself imprisoned--on a psych ward--for displaying American Revolutionary tendencies. When someone accidentally wakes him up...!
What popped into my head when I first read the quote was my experiences in China when I worked and lived there for a time. That is, I never would have the same idiotic thought process as Abrams as I attended various entertainment events and, to paraphrase Abrams, start thinking: “you look around the room and see the most Chinesest f—king room in the history of time. It’s just unbelievably Chinese.” Hey wait… without having to fire up too many brain cells I knew I was IN FREAKING CHINA, a predominantly Chinese country (duh) attending events that a lot of Chinese people like to attend. Just exactly what the hell faces would one think to see there? Obviously Abrams brain cells have been rotted through and through with his own PC propaganda and couldn’t muster enough remaining cells to realize he was in the USA, a predominantly white nation, attending an event that a lot of white people like to attend. Nothing nefarious or racist about it. [Side note: I had a great time, as short as it was, working and living in China. Wonderful folks! I’m retired now, but wouldn’t mind returning as a tourist.]
I think his quote tells us more about Abrams than anything else. He is a self-hating self-deprecating white liberal and has been thoroughly brain washed into becoming a PC advocate. He just can't help himself, suffering with PC cataracts to view the world through.
Just hypothetically thinking I wonder what Abrams would do if he were to go to China to help put together a sci-fi series for consumption in China. After attending an event in a Shanghai theater, would he walk out in a self righteous huff and deliberately exclude Chinese from the cast just to teach them a lesson in American liberal “diversity”? I suspect he’d be fired for such idiocy and find himself on a plane back to his Hollywood left wing ideological cesspool.
I agree with your observation, mcc.
Having watched the 3 episodes, in my opinion it is poorly written, poorly acted, has extremely bad camera work, and the writers and cast are vehement in their irrational bias against the morals, iintegrity, and ideals that moved civilization from the Dark Ages to individual liberty and free markets eschewing all the advances in health, nutrition, technology, and the pursuit of happiness.
But enough of the standard complaints. Here are the ones I haven’t heard yet elsewhere.
1. Many shots were framed at Dutch angles, so what were those for? Showing that the main characters shouldn’t be trusted? Or that the ship was to feel disorienting.? Or that the whole show should feel unsettling or unpleasant?
If you’re not familiar with the term Dutch angle, it’s where the camera frame is at an unusual angle to horizontal/vertical. It makes the viewer feel disoriented or suggests something disturbing about the characters shown off kilter. Watch the classic movie, “The Third Man,” where all the decent, honest people are always shown upright. All the creepy people and lying criminals are literally “not on the level”.
2. While I’m okay with all the Klingons speaking in their subtitled language, it has to be spoken at realistic speaking speed. The director should require that the actors know their transliterated lines well enough to speak them realistically. Not slooowwwwed waaaaaayyyy dooowwwnnn, just because Klingon is full of gutturals and glottal stops. There’s no reason to allow weak actors who can’t say their lines.
I couldn’t imagine a performance of The Pirates of Penzance, where an actor trudged along through the normally rapid-fire Major-General’s Song, with such lines as, “Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform, And tell you ev’ry detail of Caractacus’s uniform.”
The director (or show runners) are as incompetent as the too-slow actors. But we already knew that.
They also used it in TOS during the episode 'Wink of an Eye' to differentiate between normal time and accelerated time.
In the meantime, I'm still watching, but for a lifelong fan like me it requires a hell of a lot of cognitive dissonance to overlook things like that Spock tells Chekhov in the original series that there's never been a mutiny aboard a Starfleet vessel, only to learn now that ten years before this his own foster sister was famous for being a mutineer that started the Klingon War.
I guess I can keep hope that the writers are aware of this and have some sort of exceedingly clever explanation by the end. But given the repeated descriptions of chaos during the show's development, that's a pretty thin hope indeed.
All that said, I'm enjoying The Orville a lot more, and apparently that's the reaction of an awful lot of longtime fans.
I wish it would turn out that Discovery takes place at a point where the Mirror Universe becomes evil. In this case, we could see the universe not pure evil but laying the groundwork for the world where Mirror Spock gives up and says one person cannot summon the future.
That can't happen, though, because they've already shown the mirror universe was cartoonishly evil in the time of Captain Archer.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/art...
Maybe in 30 years DIS will be like some TOS and TNG episodes that I thought were amazing and I now think are stupid. But right now I like DIS the way I liked TOS and TNG 30 years ago. I did not like VOY or ENT, so this is the first time in a long time I've had new Star Trek I liked. Maybe they'll run it with Neutral Zone preaching or too many anomaly-of-the-week episodes, but right now I'm enjoying it.
Earl Nightingale: The Strangest Secret.
Puke!
(At least it wasn't FDR.)
ABC is getting into the game dis-entertaining with Once Upon a Time (my wife loves it) with multiculturalism muddling fantasy first episode. I'm hoping that The Expanse comes back on Scifi channel so there is a good space opera to watch.
Also loving a lady First Officer's first name~Michael. Allo-sissy-saur woo woo signing off.
Hey, Target. where's the ladies room? I'm feeling female today and I like scaring little girls.
[More fun with words I don't understand]Well, that's true. At Democratic events, I have to avoid suffragettes in their 19th century garb inviting me onto their sin-bearing bandwagon, which is way less fun than it sounds. At Republican fund raisers, thought, I have to deal with binarism, ableism, ace eraseure, and cis-supremecy. I'm offended by the notion of erasing aces![/word silliness]
I don't know what that stuff means either. I'm being silly, maybe even a silly sod. I make light of this stuff because I don't believe it's real. I think there are people who do things that are odd, mean-spirited, stupid, etc, but giving them all special names and focusing on them isn't helpful.
Absolutely, if it were true. I make light of it because I never see it and do not believe it's real.
Maybe places that have high crime have politicians who feel the need to "do something" even if it does not work, so they pass gun laws. Maybe the gun laws actually increase crime by taking guns away from law-abiding citizens. There are many explanation other than a general increase in crime.
You believe in this "liberal friends stuff", and I do not; I hardly know what it means. I also do not believe there is a huge number of evil people who do not care about people suffering in public office. I think that's all theater. The results of a large/intrusive gov't are very real. If it were just some bad guys who don't care of people, it might be easier to solve. That is not the case. I don't have an answer. I'm open to CoS. I'd be open to gov't-limiting amendments. Or maybe some charismatic person could pull together a bi-partisan gov't-cutting coalition or something.
This sounds absurd, but I actually think my son's football is part of the solution. Those kids come together from different walks of life, get physically moving, work as a team, experience wins and losses. I'm a nerd and don't fully understand the game, but I really admire those kids, coaches, and refs. My 9 y/o explained to me how one kid missed a catch by trying to make it look cooler. He also explained how they played a team whose coach constantly argued with the ref, while his coach accepted the calls He said the nature of the game at this level is you don't yell at the ref and should generally accept the calls unless there's something egregious, and you have to accept the refs are human and make mistakes. Wow. These are hard concepts, and he's stoic about things he really cares about, like whether his play was valid. It's not just my kid. American football and soccer bring out good character traits. I do not know if football will save America (I'm half joking), but I think I can have as much influence taking my kid to it as I have lobbying my politicians.
The rest of us who are not involved in politics do not see all this liberal/conservative stuff. They do other modern-kid stuff too, like always bringing snacks and water (water makes sense for sporting events, but they do it for everything), and always "eyes, eyes, don't run around that large tree. I need to be able to see you every moment!" I would never have understood parents yelling "eyes" at that age. I have no idea how that fits into what talking heads who get paid to bicker say, but it's definitely the trend. I just don't participate.
I think you're saying in the 70s people realize the gov't was lying and called for reforms. Now it's just petty. I totally see that. I've never lived through that time, when I imagine people were having a debate about giving the gov't the secrecy it needed to do its job but being sure there was accountability. Now it's just politicians wanting to lock the other up.
I see no influence whatsoever of a takeover of education. I see problems with education, but I don't see it being so well coordinated that crooked politicians hatch and execute a plan to raise a generation of people who won't hold them accountable. That's laughable. I do see people not holding gov't accountable, but I don't single out education over other cultural factors and I certainly do not think it was a centrally-planned plot.
What you say is kind of depressing because I do imagine my parents' generation overthrew that established order. My generation scoffed at the idea of an established order, but I see what you're saying of it leading to naked "blame it all on the other guy" discourse.
I say judge each claim on its own merits rather than grouping people. If there is the same person making contradictory claims, then you can ask that person. But I don't accept that there's some elite gang who all think the same things.
"Why is Harvey Weinstein such a beast and the guy who murdered the girl in SF not? "
I think it's all rubbish, just trash. People can rubberneck at life's tragedies in a sanctimonious way, as if it were part of the policy-making process. I don't want people making one another feel uncomfortable, and I certainly want to help illegal immigrants any way I can. Lurid news stories are not the way to do it.
"The schools have been pursuing a deliberate program of idiots educating "
I don't believe the public grade schools do very much at all deliberately, at least a nation-wide thing. It's all about having a good teacher.
I see absolutely none of the "Hitler Youth " type stuff whatsoever. It's actually 180 degrees opposite. There are all these standards focused on accommodating students with special needs, and the great teachers navigate them and do a good job. Some of the special needs accommodations make no sense, like having a full-time person assigned to be a shirpa for someone with developmental issues that make his cognitive abilities way below his abilities. There's no science I know of that says having them around people their age but not able to follow any of the class material is helpful to them. But when it's for special needs, they turn off good judgment.
Overall the quality is better than what I'd expect from a free handout from the gov't, and that's not saying all that much. If they get the right teacher, it's better than the expensive schools we interviewed. I have seen absolutely zero top-down politicization.
"you send kids to college, they are exposed to liberal professors who program them to ignore the laws they don't like "and be a force for change"
I'm trying to instill those liberal values at a very young age, not to "program" them, but for them to figure out the world and have agency. Be willing to break the law in protest and accept the consequences if necessary. Be a force for change. Happen to things rather than letting things happen to you. I am trying to give them these liberal values now. College is way too late.
Most of them say they were not even physically coerced in any way. I certainly do not condone making people feel uncomfortable, but doing it is not as bad as a serious violent crime.
I see no politics whatsoever in DIS this far in the first three episodes, not even the slightest hint. Nerds like me are speculating what's going on.The show won't immediately reveal its secrets! Is it the beginnings of a mirror universe? Section 31? Trying to make ot about contemporary politics is a far greater stretch. It's just not there. They may take it that direction, but there's no evidence. We really don't know exactly what's going on.
One interpretation is they're setting up a bunch of political statements. Another is a good villain has motivations besides just being a bad guy. The audience totally disagrees with Khan, for example, but we know why he's doing this. He really was smarter and stronger than Kirk. But Kirk won. And then Kirk acted like he was doing him a favor by marooning him on a planet instead of sending him to jail. Kirk never checks in on him, and Khan's wife dies horribly. Khan is irrational b/c he never would have wanted to be checked in on, but that's the whole point! Khan is wrong. But we know why he does what he does. It makes perfect sense that this person who was stronger, smarter, and used to winning lost and then lost his wife, and he is on an insane mission to beat Kirk.
The issue of losing your local culture to progress is an old one and a reasonable motivation to give the Klingons. It's not necessarily commentary on those issues happening right now any more than it's about Roman roads and trade causing Roman ideas and language to replace local ones 2000 years ago.
Fortunately, many of the fans of Star Trek can see the obvious political propaganda that you conveniently ignore, as you ignore O and Hitlery's unethical and unconstitutional actions.
Right, because we don't know yet. They haven't given us enough to know what they're saying. They are definitely NOT going for "Trek and fun". It's obviously darker, although the vein that DS9 was darker than TNG. This appears to be even darker. But it's too early to say.
I find modern political debate extremely childish, so I hope they jump into it in an obvious way. I do think that would ruin the show.
"the military are what kept that flag flying."
I understand this is a tangent, but I don't get it at all, probably because I have somewhat "radical" views on it.. I think we should have only a limited standing army and a well-regulated militia of armed citizens should be primarily responsible for keeping the flag flying. I think having a permanent weapons industry big enough to influence the gov't and forces deployed around the world are contrary to the ideals of the flag. I think the flag stands for, among other things, the right to protest and say unpopular things. So I guess in my view the flag itself in a very very loose sense "disrespects our military" as we know it and is a banner for people protesting the government. People protesting, including protesting a large standing army and its actions, are putting the ideals of the flag into action.
Most people think the world is different now. This is related to, but not at all the same as, people saying parts of the Bill of Rights as literally written does not apply to the modern world.
I think you said people wanting to control one another is why we need a large standing army. I think Madison said this was a reason we need not have a large standing army.
I have only a vague understanding of the meaning of you're saying about snowflakes, diaper kids(???), and so on. It seems like you're saying the world's problems are related to character flaws. I tend to think people have the same flaws, and there were snowflakes, jerks, fantasy-prone people, officious people, and all of that since behaviorally modern humans appeared. .
The most extreme end f this is their cannibalistic feeding frenzy all blame games devolve into:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2...
http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/05/uc-...
If you can still not identify the flakes in your world, you may need some therapy, as you may be compromised. Or you have never had to work with, near, around or for one of the creatures.
For the military, go study your history, look to 1938-41, US Involvement in International affairs, the America First group, and what happened December 7, 1941. Then extrapolate how bad we did for the first year or so, and how incompetent the tiny military we did have performed, and transfer the data to today, and see how secure you would be with a billion armed Chinese coming to visit.
Isn't that amazing though. A problem of war cropped up and they turned their economy into fighting it. The theory was the gov't would back out of the economy once the problem was over, but of course it's never over. The gov't says they're holding their finger in the dike and people would die if it weren't for them. So, they say, one country has to appoint itself police officer and protect the world.
"see how secure you would be with a billion armed Chinese coming to visit"
If we had an armed population, some of whom trained together regularly, it would be very costly to attack. And the spoils of war aren't there. The people of the world are enjoying a wonderful lifestyle their grandparents couldn't conceive of by trading with one another. The value is in the things they make for one another. It's not like gold that you could go loot. The value is in trade. Going to war with an armed population that's willing to engage in friendly trade is a losing deal.
I'm not saying jerks, criminals, and people with other character flaws do not exist. They exist. I just don't see them as a new phenomenon causing particular problems. There's a whole industry saying, "you're struggling in life, and it's mostly to blame on [insert people with character flaw] and their leaders like [insert politicians]." That seems bogus to me. There have always been human frailties. People's problems and successes, including mine, are mostly their own doing and chance.
Maybe this has nothing to do with all this stuff about flakes programming sods or whatever. Frankly that stuff sounds like a bad sci-fi horror film with nothing to do with reality, BUT I do know there is some sociological change going on that I do not understand. I see no indication it's related to race or anything, but something is going on.
In the world of adults, I see none of this at all. Sure politicians are trying to get people fired up and angry at their neighbors, but adults seem to ignore it and focus on their lives. With kids, though, we treat them like we're paranoid if they have a moment to create their own game or just hang out society will crumble.
Deligitimizing institutions - It seems like there's a broad trend of Boomers saying they reformed institutions and my generation is too cynical and does not appreciate their work. Millennials seem like they grew up slower and still retain some childish feeling that if they do what they're told they shouldn't have any hardship. (I think all middle-aged people think this way, so I'm cautious it may be just middle-age crankiness about the youth.)
"Hillary gang bailed on her for Bernie" - You're Sanders challenged Clinton's with promises of gov't handouts.
"maybe you missed it"
No, I didn't. I really wanted Clinton to win the electoral college, so I was reading those articles. I saw the whole the thing.
"stolid conservatives, who once bought, stay bought."
Bought? You mean in the sense of bribed? Or you mean less fickle? How's that related?
flake universe - I think this is your word for the thing where people say they don't want to be around upsetting ideas. No one likes upsetting ideas, but these people go overboard and say they shouldn't have to hear even respectfully-stated ideas they don't like. I think, but am not sure, it's related to hovering parents.
"when there was a communist under every chair, desk and behind every tree, the needed to know where you were every moment"
I was a kid in the 70s and 80s. I remember people being rightly afraid of nuclear war, but I don't remember it translating into your parents needing to know exactly where you were every minute. Kids were running around playing. I never sensed adults felt like hovering over their kids would protect them from the Soviet threat.
"90s we had Iraq and Desert Storm and that moved in terrorism."
So I was a teenager by the 90s, and I never sensed people were afraid their young kids would be affected by the invasion of Iraq.
I do remember reading about parents who worried about their young children being affected by terrorism. At the time I thought it wasn't true, but now I suspect it was. I was a young adult by then and not thinking about children.
"the "threat of the week "
This is real, but it is not at all what I'm talking about. The thing I observe is obsessively hovering over kids with no stated threat. It's not that they're worried about something that I don't agree is a threat. It's more like a psychological ritual or something where they must spend every second staring at their kids. I suspect it's the cause of the thing where some young adults think they should be protected from respectful disagreement. That problem is frankly too serious for name-calling. I think it's a real sociological trend. I think the pendulum is swinging the other way. People are calling it giving their kids "grit" and raising them "free-range". The words mean basically NOT doing the obsessive hovering that became popular at some point after I grew up.
"Then you get told to tell the nicely, and do not scare them with loud noises, mean words or hand gestures."
I do not know what this means. Who's doing the telling? I think you're describing a particular uptight person. I used to ruminate about why people have a problem with me, but I've mellowed and I just avoid the situation. It can be hard if it's a big client, but I know if I refer them to someone else and gracefully exit the project, in a year everyone will be happier and I'll hardly remember.
I mostly follow lamestream. A lot of their ads are geared toward silly sods because the primary content is aimed at programming sods. The public-facing reporters and commentators are mostly snowflakes, but they have many regular non-snow flakes working behind the scenes. The flake universe if is bounded but expanding, which some see as an indictment of the very framework of society. They reported on the Hilary gang, but they were less keen to report on the Obamanation gang because it's built on the feminist agenda and, as icing on the cake, the LGBT agenda. I actually work with an LGBT person, and he keeps his agenda on tiny yellow postit notes and expecting me to pander to it. Why doesn't he use Google Calendar for his agenda? The media don't cover the suffragettes much, but the assistant principal at my kids' school is a suffragette, and she blathers on making no logical sense about racism and her bandwagon of bearing sins. My wife works with someone in one of the black communities, and I'm actually grateful talk of it is verboten because they're creating their own brand of hell and that's unpleasant. I'd rather go stay in the fancy cabin in the north woods that our flake friends bought with money they made wallpapering over tyranny. The flakes in the gangs of Beast and Bernie are so different from your average rank-and-file flakes. Once I tried to tell them the awful truth, but they didn't care for it.
All these people with funny names are a crapstorm falling over each other to control the other groups.
[/Using words I don't know]
I have no idea who any of these people are. It's all gibberish to me. If I said anything real above, it's by accident because I don't know what any of it means. If I ever really met a suffragette inviting me on her sin-bearing bandwagon, I was probably just walked away confused. It's truly gibberish to me. All these groups and gangs definitely sound like royal jerks though.
If you know any suffragettes, flakes, or anyone part of a "gang", I would just stay away from them.
Here is the history, it is very convoluted:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/St...
Here is one discussing JJ Abrams issues with it and some of the backstory:
http://www.slashfilm.com/complicated-...
The show is about a flawed protagonist who in a war situation literally pulls the trigger to start war. She said at the beginning killing the enemy leader would make him a martyr and lead to a horrible war. Klingons killed her parents, and she shows clear signs of wanting war with the Klingons. Now everyone blames her for starting the war. But did she pull the trigger to protect her captain or because on some level she wanted a war? The show doesn't tell us. Maybe the character is asking herself this question. She acts like she has a death wish, but is that because she really did start the war on purpose or because she didn't want to and failed miserably. We don't know. The nitwit character in this video would misses the whole point and asks what does all this mean for supporters of President Trump and for issues of race and gender identity? Of course it has absolutely nothing to do with those things. That's just what he's obsessed with.
Much of what he talks about are Lexus and the Olive Tree issues that have been with us since people started trading and traveling farther than they had before, and they've obviously accelerated with jet travel and the Internet. He thinks it's something new and applies to specific groups of people.
"Federation has more in common with the Borg"
He says this like it's bad, but I really like it when the Federation isn't presented as an always-right utopia. Eddington made this exact analog to the Borg on DS9. I hope they make issues related to this part of the story arc.
"Who exactly are the bad guys in this story?"
It remains to be seen. We don't know!! This isn't a show made for television decades ago, written
before on-demand video when stories had to make it obvious who the bad guys are.
He keeps saying "the left is obsessed with identity politics." "Everything is offensive to them."
That's hilarious-- talk about the pot calling the kettle black. If I had tried my hardest to look for anything this guy might find not consistent with his version of political correctness, I could never have found as many reasons to be offended.
The issues he claims the "Hollywood bubble" supports, e.g. feminism, social justice, etc, are things
I take for granted as virtues. So maybe I and possibly most people are in the bubble with them.
Maybe this video gives a view outside my bubble, and it isn't pretty. It's kind of like the
caricature people make of Republicans as jerks, except he's apparently a real person.
I absolutely do not think particular parties and candidates make people jerks. I think the character in the video is a jerk, and in this video in manifests by him contorting a show into being about politics.
B5 had a similar opening plot.
The other one which I think pretty accurately portrays how things could be is Firefly.
I only saw a few episodes. I plan to watch that entire series at some point.
I also got to meet Claudia Christian one time at a writers conference - she was really nice. Got a hand-signed glossy she brought the second day just for me. Also got to meet Mira Furlan (plays Delenn). She wasn't quite as pleasant.
I didn't get past the part where he said Janeway was a good captain. I didn't care for that character or VOY. I'll listen to the rest of it. :)
"I think he does a decent job of justifying it"
I can think of reasons I don't see it.
1. The writers haven't revealed it all yet. Maybe Burnham is going to have a long redemption story arc and all the antagonists will white males and have a rude racists attitude like that admiral. I took his race-related remark as something to make us not like him so we didn't care when died, but maybe the whole show is going to be that way. It's too early to tell. If they get preachy about politics, I won't like it. If you want to see hardcore leftwing political preaching in Star Trek, see The Neutral Zone. It's hard to watch.
2. If his complaint is the writers believe in feminism, protecting the environment, and social justice, I'll never see the problem, as long as it doesn't preach, because I believe in those things as basic values. It could be there and I'm missing it.
3. I may be a Star Trek fanboy reading all kinds of complexity into a by-the-numbers TV show where the cop with a chip on her shoulder goes to jail for shooting a bad guy and has to prove to the world he was right.
So there are lots of reason I could be wrong. But right now the show reminds of how I felt as a kid watching TOS, so I really like it.