It's getting so that the movie screens are filling up with scfi and CGI films that are underbaked whitebread. TV stories start so that I can tell you how it ends in the first 5 minutes. Last year films like "Ex Machina" and "The Arrival" gave me hope that we might be entering a new era of intelligent well made films. The New "Blade Runner" film has been praised to the skies and I was looking forward to seeing it, which I did today. I am less than pleased. But as members of the forum see the film I'll withold my opinion until a few have chimed in.

The thing that is sad is you have reality and perception. If you look at television a few years back, you would find a representative sample of the country as a whole, every race and gender was represented in about the same numbers. Lately, there has been a perceived lack of minority programs, so these SJW's have decided to rectify this imbalance. There has been a push to hit all the social justice targets (gays, blacks, feminists, etc.). Just look at the ABC line-up in the US on Tuesday and Wednesday night's. You have a white family from the Midwest that is just above being white trash, an Asian family who are your stereotypical overachievers (I know this is based on a memoir of Eddie Huang), a black family that is an anti-minstral show where the blacks are normal and the non-blacks are caricatures, and a new show with a 20 something rapper becomes mayor through a publicity stunt to sell his songs on Tuesday. Wednesday has a Jewish family (no real problem here), a show about a family with a disabled child with cerebral palsy, then a family that hits many social justice targets (older stuck in the past father marries younger Latin Hispanic hottie with a son, a daughter who is more masculine than her husband, and a son is gay with a dopey Midwest partner and adopted overacheiving Asian daughter), and it ends with another white family who cannot seem to fit into their town because they are so poor by comparison (so a 'have versus havenots' story). If you add to this the cancellation of the second highest rated show (Last Man Standing) about a middle-American afluent conservative family that was probably very representative of normal white people in this country, you kind of feel there an effort on this networks part to try to make a perceptived slight into reality. I am not saying these shows are bad, many are funny and enjoyable. It just strikes me as them trying to go out of their way to do the cliched 'I cannot be racist because I have black friends' without actually saying it.

The fan reviews on IMDB are about 20 to 1 negative, (and many include thoughtful criticism.)

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.

I fully agree. The Borg always impressed me as the ultimate totalitarian collective.

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...!

I haven’t watched any of the episodes and never would have seen this “critique” had it not been brought to the Gulch. The rant seems to pinpoint a lot of leftward political propaganda that’s been created in Hollywood and Madison Avenue and then passed off to the public as supposedly innocuous “entertainment and advertising”. There’s quite a bit to comment on in the video, but I’ll just stick to one point that stood out as soon as I saw it and that is the quote from J. J. Abrams: “We wrote these characters but when we went to cast it, one of the things I had felt, having been to the Emmys a couple of times - you look around that room and you see the whitest f—king room in the history of time. Its just unbelievably white. And I just thought, we’re casting this show… etc.” and then goes off on a personal crusade to teach all those white people a lesson in liberal diversity by deliberately making sure the casting of STD [Star Trek: Diseased? LOL] strictly adheres to the PC pecking order.

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.

Too bad the SJW agenda has infected the Hollywood culture, as the Borg would have be a perfect allegory for Social Justice ideals of today. The Borg are a hive mind that demands compliance with the collective. Any race they come upon they convert and force to join them. There is no other point of view, so anyone who fights against the agenda of the Borg becomes an enemy and must be eradicated, including drones that step beyond the collective.

Can't disagree with that. Star Trek (Roddenberry) assumed that with technological advances would come more "civilized" behaviors in humanity. It ignores the individual, unfortunately.

The other one which I think pretty accurately portrays how things could be is Firefly.

Discovery is supposed to be in the JJverse of Star Trek, so what Leonard Nimoy's Spock said was true. They felt that the original canon was too constraining because it tied their hands for where they wanted to go with the franchise. So they caused an event in the original universe that created one where they could ignore certain inconvenient canon by rewriting the origin stories and characters to free them to create whatever they needed to push their agenda.

That was because B5 was reality carried forward. Strazynski said that humans have had 1000's years to become less greedy and altruistic humans, another two or three centuries isn't going to change us. And Star Trek was too sanitized. It's a noble goal to aspire to, but it would always remain beyond our grasp.

I will wait till it's on Amazon as part of my subscription.

Meaning, of course, some jobs are worse than superfluous in a society that respects people's basic rights.

New (for a little while away) thought~I want to see the Black Lives Matter episode.

Yep. John Galt said it best in AS3, "That kind of job shouldn't exist!"

I have come to expect nothing less out of HollyWorld and simply change the channels or refuse to watch, buy or support any of their garbage. A friend just told me how great a movie "Made In America" with Tom Cruise was. All I could say is Who is this A hole Tom Cruise and No Thanks.

I watched the first episode, only. I’d be nuts to spend money to watch Star Drek, full of hyper-political nonsense and absurd, feeble bridge crew. I kept waiting for the odd and mutinous (but very pretty) “Michael” to tell us about nasty male Klingons named “Cindy” and “Mabel”.

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.

I agree with you. The Borg can only have gotten their start as a measure to cope with perceived imperfections in organic bodies. Couple that with a strong dose of elitism, and you get the hive-mind that wants to possess everyone.

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.

If only Discovery didn't say "Star Trek" on it, and therefore its disregard for canon were irrelevant, I'd be okay with the show so far and looking forward to seeing what they do with it.

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.

The Federation is the Borg and Star Trek Discovery will likely get an Emmy for the left loving it.
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.

Interesting. I am working on a story about how the Borg got their start in a civilization that developed nanobots as medical devices to cure virtually all diseases and injuries. No! Wait, that's happening right now in our own medical labs. Uh Oh!!

I agree. The Orville is a lot of fun. Much better than I expected.

Me Too!

What makes me want go see a movie (or show) is if the critics hate it, because most of them are left-wing ideologues. Look no further than "An Inconvenient Truth" (and its sequel).

"The show is about a flawed protagonist who in a war situation literally pulls the trigger to start war."

B5 had a similar opening plot.

I'm too busy enjoying The Orville. I'm finding this series reminds me of the original Star Trek, which didn't mind letting a little humor slip into story lines.

Earl Nightingale changed my life. While sitting in my truck waiting for a class to begin one morning (U of Wyoming, 1984, grad school), I listened to Earl on the radio and he said, "Values determine needs, needs determine goals." Has helped me many times clarify what the f**k was going on in my life.