QMX Star Trek General discussion thread

[Pauln6a]

Very well put.

Just spitballing but I wonder if the issue is that some people feel the writers have taken a clear, unambiguous step in a certain direction which, while often heavily implied, it was possible to ignore?

Classic example is the allegorical episode of TNG where Riker starts a heterosexual relationship with a member of a hermaphrodite species. The clear message of the episode (to me) is that homophobia damages people's lives and freedom but because the episode is framed as pro-heterosexuality, it would be possible for homophobes to ignore the intended message and see one that resonates with their own viewpoint. This is the 'softball' described in the YouTube video.

Maybe the writers are just guilty of not making their message ambiguous enough? I'm not sure that can be right though because having watched all three seasons of Disco and Picard, I have no idea what the message is supposed to be. It's not as obvious in a serialised show as it is in an episodic format. You get multiple themes across all episodes. The story is about the characters' journey. Voyager could have done with more of this I think.

 

[Asta]

Just spitballing but I wonder if the issue is that some people feel the writers have taken a clear, unambiguous step in a certain direction which, while often heavily implied, it was possible to ignore?

Classic example is the allegorical episode of TNG where Riker starts a heterosexual relationship with a member of a hermaphrodite species. The clear message of the episode (to me) is that homophobia damages people's lives and freedom but because the episode is framed as pro-heterosexuality, it would be possible for homophobes to ignore the intended message and see one that resonates with their own viewpoint. This is the 'softball' described in the YouTube video.

Maybe the writers are just guilty of not making their message ambiguous enough? I'm not sure that can be right though because having watched all three seasons of Disco and Picard, I have no idea what the message is supposed to be. It's not as obvious in a serialised show as it is in an episodic format. You get multiple themes across all episodes.

Throughout its history Star Trek has set out to make viewers think about the questions and dilemmas posed in each episode. I see it as a continuation of the science fiction short stories published in pulp magazines, where tales of alien worlds and alien cultures were actually tales bringing into focus issues of contemporary society. Just as Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes was about racism and slavery.

In the 1960s Star Trek was daring a section of the audience by having a central character such as Uhura, not only black but also a woman. Though there's a mixed message, because the female uniform comprised of very short skirts. Because sex sells, and a series has to be watched, and Roddenberry wasn't the perfect 'gentleman' by certain accounts.

Certain religious communities apparently took offence to Spock, since they took him to be a devil. Which seems ridiculous from our modern viewpoint. Whatever would they have made of a series like Buffy or Supernatural?

There were surely issues that a science fiction show just couldn't get away with at the time, because they'd be generally regarded as socially unacceptable and abnormal, and the series would probably have been hounded off the air.

But as the years pass and viewers become more tolerant and understanding, writers have the opportunity to become even more daring. We've reached the point where it's normal to portray 'heroes' of any sexual orientation or gender, because the stories are reflecting contemporary society.

Regardless of sex, gender or race, the stories are still about tackling dilemmas. There isn't always an easy answer, or any perfect solution at all. I thought Picard handled this far better than Discovery, because it was a more tightly told tale.

 

[Pauln6a]

Throughout its history Star Trek has set out to make viewers think about the questions and dilemmas posed in each episode. I see it as a continuation of the science fiction short stories published in pulp magazines, where tales of alien worlds and alien cultures were actually tales bringing into focus issues of contemporary society. Just as Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes was about racism and slavery.

In the 1960s Star Trek was daring a section of the audience by having a central character such as Uhura, not only black but also a woman. Though there's a mixed message, because the female uniform comprised of very short skirts. Because sex sells, and a series has to be watched, and Roddenberry wasn't the perfect 'gentleman' by certain accounts.

Certain religious communities apparently took offence to Spock, since they took him to be a devil. Which seems ridiculous from our modern viewpoint. Whatever would they have made of a series like Buffy or Supernatural?

There were surely issues that a science fiction show just couldn't get away with at the time, because they'd be generally regarded as socially unacceptable and abnormal, and the series would probably have been hounded off the air.

But as the years pass and viewers become more tolerant and understanding, writers have the opportunity to become even more daring. We've reached the point where it's normal to portray 'heroes' of any sexual orientation or gender, because the stories are reflecting contemporary society.

Regardless of sex, gender or race, the stories are still about tackling dilemmas. There isn't always an easy answer, or any perfect solution at all. I thought Picard handled this far better than Discovery, because it was a more tightly told tale.

I agree. I found that Discovery had interesting core stories but some of the implementation was sloppy. They don't seem to have a great grasp of Trek Tech, let alone pre-TOS Trek Tech. Some things like Pike looking through a window when a bomb goes just make no sense. Reinforce the structural integrity field first and erect an internal force field, you fool!

Picard did a good job of reverentially referencing TNG and the movies while leaving a lot more potential. I like it overall. It lacked the cloying emotional melodrama of Discovery. Stop standing around while people die dammit! You're professionals!

I think Anson Mount's popularity took them by surprise and they've been very fortunate that the actors involved seem interested in being involved more. I don't know if Mount's ensemble will be able to capture the elusive lightning in a bottle of TOS but the fact that the show has been formed out of positive fan reviews,could mean that dissatisfied classic Trekkers could get what they're hungry for.

If it proves even more popular than Discovery and Picard then this will send a signal about the kind of stories that sell. It's a positive way to achieve desired results rather than a negative one. I hope they pull it off.

 

[jal76]

I think it boils down to some people getting to a place in their lives where the world has changed and progressed with the passage of time.
They barely recognize it any more.

Men used to be men...women were women...people knew their place. And now things have gone all topsy turvy.

Political correctness. People can?t take a joke anymore. You used to be able to say what you wanted without people deciding to go and get all offended. Getting offended just pits people against one another right?

It?s downright scary how much things have changed. Well at least I still have my Star Trek...no matter what that will always be a little slice of the good old days frozen in time.

The 1960s were great for everyone (especially in the southern United States). Why can?t things just stay that way?
But now PC HollyWEIRD cosmopolitan elites had to go and ruin Star Trek.

In the sixties they cast a Canadian war hero as the chief engineer but Woke Trek had the nerve to cast the kid from the Broadway musical Rent as the chief engineer?
What is the world coming to?

And we all loved Uhura...she answered the phones on the NCC-1701 (just the 1701) really well...but they would have never made someone who looked like her the lead character...Woke Trek you just don?t get it do you!!!

 

[FlyAndFight]

I've stayed out of the philosophical conversations going on here because I basically am only interested in the 1/6 figures but I decided to participate with a quick rundown of what I find enjoyable and annoying with Star Trek in general.

I don't know about the rest of you but I simply want to be entertained, when watching television or going to the movies, especially with my Sci-Fi. I prefer not to be instructed, preached to or indoctrinated, especially when it is a one-sided affair.

If there's a message in the story, that's perfectly fine but no need to force any specific agenda down one's throat, especially when dealing with an established sci-fi universe.

As far as the Star Trek universe goes, I enjoy TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager. They may have all followed similar story structure but it worked and worked well. They also followed their set canon which to me made the universe a bigger, richer place because of it. I didn't like the retro-vision of Enterprise initially but I've been watching a few episodes lately and have decided to give it a chance. I enjoyed the first JJ Abrams Star Trek film quite a bit, the second was ok, the third was meh. I haven't seen an episode of Discovery but did see all of Picard and while there was a some things to like, there was a lot to dislike as well. I also found the ending disappointing and what the setup is for continuing the series uninteresting. I currently have no plans to catch the next season.

It just seems to me that Hollywood has become lazy and in turn, rather boring. The number of remakes and reboots in just the last two decades only reinforces that opinion. Within the last 10 years or so, we've seen remakes and reboots of films that no one even asked for and then fail pretty miserably at the box office. The studios/press/actors actually have the gall to blame the failure on the fans of the originals, spewing some pathetic "fill-in-the-blank-phobia" as the reason.

The bottom line is basically that we all "like what we like" and if the product doesn't appeal to the individual, there's no reason to throw money at it. The same goes for 1/6 figures!

If only we were able to complete our collections with the remaining TOS crew, TNG crew, some TMP and WoK figures...

 

[jal76]

Great post FlyAndFight! I liked Picard but can appreciate your well reasoned perspective on it!

 

[FlyAndFight]

Great post FlyAndFight! I liked Picard but can appreciate your well reasoned perspective on it!

 

[Scifi67]

Well said FlyAndFight!

 

[Pauln6a]

I'm still working on completing a TMP line up.

 

[Pauln6a]

I'm still working on completing a TMP line up. Uhura and Chekov would be nice but the only 'announcement' we've had so far albeit second hand is that the second wave of Scotty and Sulu should be coming.

I'm waiting for the updated bodies, particularly for Spock and McCoy before I can look to get the uniforms made. I should be able to do them in two waves while I wait. First wave could be Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Rand and Ilia. I'm making enquiries to get the buckles and badges to start.

I'm very nervous about butchering Scotty by trying to add a moustache. Maybe I will send him away to have it done professionally!

 

[Koloth]

OK, seems that we are now at a point where this forum is more about venting the hate or dislike for the new Trek series rather than the QMX figures. Maybe we could all get back to discussing the 1/6 scale line.

Right!!!

 

[abake]

I think it boils down to some people getting to a place in their lives where the world has changed and progressed with the passage of time.
They barely recognize it any more.

Men used to be men...women were women...people knew their place. And now things have gone all topsy turvy.

Political correctness. People can?t take a joke anymore. You used to be able to say what you wanted without people deciding to go and get all offended. Getting offended just pits people against one another right?

It?s downright scary how much things have changed. Well at least I still have my Star Trek...no matter what that will always be a little slice of the good old days frozen in time.

The 1960s were great for everyone (especially in the southern United States). Why can?t things just stay that way?
But now PC HollyWEIRD cosmopolitan elites had to go and ruin Star Trek.

In the sixties they cast a Canadian war hero as the chief engineer but Woke Trek had the nerve to cast the kid from the Broadway musical Rent as the chief engineer?
What is the world coming to?

And we all loved Uhura...she answered the phones on the NCC-1701 (just the 1701) really well...but they would have never made someone who looked like her the lead character...Woke Trek you just don?t get it do you!!!

Is my sarcasm detector not working?

 

[NCC-1701 no bloody ABCorD]

I've stayed out of the philosophical conversations going on here because I basically am only interested in the 1/6 figures but I decided to participate with a quick rundown of what I find enjoyable and annoying with Star Trek in general.

I don't know about the rest of you but I simply want to be entertained, when watching television or going to the movies, especially with my Sci-Fi. I prefer not to be instructed, preached to or indoctrinated, especially when it is a one-sided affair.

If there's a message in the story, that's perfectly fine but no need to force any specific agenda down one's throat, especially when dealing with an established sci-fi universe.

As far as the Star Trek universe goes, I enjoy TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager. They may have all followed similar story structure but it worked and worked well. They also followed their set canon which to me made the universe a bigger, richer place because of it. I didn't like the retro-vision of Enterprise initially but I've been watching a few episodes lately and have decided to give it a chance. I enjoyed the first JJ Abrams Star Trek film quite a bit, the second was ok, the third was meh. I haven't seen an episode of Discovery but did see all of Picard and while there was a some things to like, there was a lot to dislike as well. I also found the ending disappointing and what the setup is for continuing the series uninteresting. I currently have no plans to catch the next season.

It just seems to me that Hollywood has become lazy and in turn, rather boring. The number of remakes and reboots in just the last two decades only reinforces that opinion. Within the last 10 years or so, we've seen remakes and reboots of films that no one even asked for and then fail pretty miserably at the box office. The studios/press/actors actually have the gall to blame the failure on the fans of the originals, spewing some pathetic "fill-in-the-blank-phobia" as the reason.

The bottom line is basically that we all "like what we like" and if the product doesn't appeal to the individual, there's no reason to throw money at it. The same goes for 1/6 figures!

If only we were able to complete our collections with the remaining TOS crew, TNG crew, some TMP and WoK figures...

I don’t disagree with you. I believe we will all see the colors that we see the way we want to see them. There’s really no debate to be won, just a lot of opinions. BUT I WILL CALL OUT TODAY’S HOLLYWOODERS WHO RELENTLESSLY AND WITHOUT PAUSE FORCE-FEED THEIR AGENDAS AS THEIR PRIME DIRECTIVE. Kurtzman comes to mind. And Discovery and Picard.

I love TOS, I like Enterprise, I thought some of TNG is pretty good but most of it is not to my taste, the rest of the series after that I do not like at all. I like the 2009 movie as well, the next one is pretty good, and the last one is as you put it, meh. I like all the movies with the original cast to varying degrees (including Final Frontier and Generations). First Contact is ok. Insurrection and Nemesis are pretty awful.

As far as 1/6 figures, my only interest lies with TOS, and only the main 3, with the possible inclusion of Scotty.

 

[davejames]

I agree. I found that Discovery had interesting core stories but some of the implementation was sloppy. They don't seem to have a great grasp of Trek Tech, let alone pre-TOS Trek Tech. Some things like Pike looking through a window when a bomb goes just make no sense. Reinforce the structural integrity field first and erect an internal force field, you fool!

Picard did a good job of reverentially referencing TNG and the movies while leaving a lot more potential. I like it overall. It lacked the cloying emotional melodrama of Discovery. Stop standing around while people die dammit! You're professionals!

I think Anson Mount's popularity took them by surprise and they've been very fortunate that the actors involved seem interested in being involved more. I don't know if Mount's ensemble will be able to capture the elusive lightning in a bottle of TOS but the fact that the show has been formed out of positive fan reviews,could mean that dissatisfied classic Trekkers could get what they're hungry for.

If it proves even more popular than Discovery and Picard then this will send a signal about the kind of stories that sell. It's a positive way to achieve desired results rather than a negative one. I hope they pull it off.

I guess I'm one of those weirdos who actually enjoyed DSC more than Picard. DSC can be awfully frantic at times, but the story is at least constantly moving and twisting and surprising you with fun callbacks (Mirror Universe! Harry Mudd! Captain Pike! Talos IV! Section 31!), while still finding time for much better character development than anything we got post-DS9, or in the super lightweight Abrams movies.

Picard though just felt weighed down by the one storyline that became less and less interesting the longer it went on, and never made a ton of sense to start with. Not to mention a Picard and Starfleet that often felt a little too out of character from what we once knew.

 

[Pauln6a]

I guess I'm one of those weirdos who actually enjoyed DSC more than Picard. DSC can be awfully frantic at times, but the story is at least constantly moving and twisting and surprising you with fun callbacks (Mirror Universe! Harry Mudd! Captain Pike! Talos IV! Section 31!), while still finding time for much better character development than anything we got post-DS9, or in the super lightweight Abrams movies.

Picard though just felt weighed down by the one storyline that became less and less interesting the longer it went on, and never made a ton of sense to start with. Not to mention a Picard and Starfleet that often felt a little too out of character from what we once knew.

Now Discovery's Harry Mudd is an interesting one. He's younger and less flamboyant than Roger C Carmel, but I think the undercurrent of ruthlessness is brilliantly understated. More in keeping with his first appearance. It's a shame that he can't really cross paths with Spock. I wonder if they will try and re-use him anyway.

I don't think Disco Mudd has enough traction for a 1/6 figure though. I reckon Pike, Number One, and Speck might though, once the series gets underway. I think Nanjin teased Pike's uniform a while back.

 

[davejames]

Yeah looks like he had already put together a full Pike figure, and it looked incredible. So bummed I'll never get to own one.

 

[Pauln6a]

Yeah looks like he had already put together a full Pike figure, and it looked incredible. So bummed I'll never get to own one.

Wait and see once the show is out. You never know!

 

[jal76]

Is my sarcasm detector not working?

Definite sarcasm I think the EXACT opposite of all of that...but I truly do believe that everything I wrote here is running through the minds of the ?I hate ?woke? trek? crowd. I must have done a really good job of nailing it to throw off your sarcasm detector

 

[Doodlebob7]

I'm 50, I trained as a lawyer and I have enjoyed all versions of Trek, albeit some more than others. I'm an educated adult male. Nobody has spoon fed me anything, except perhaps legal precedents.

What I see in your tone is polarisation of the debate. Absolute right versus absolute wrong. That's not Star Trek at all. We're killers but we choose not to kill. Engage in the discussion. Learn from the debate. Understand other viewpoints even if you disagree. Find common ground.

THAT'S Star Trek in every iteration. That is also what makes for successful 1/6 figure lines too.

im sorry to say, but if you think star trek is going to be good anytime soon you're kidding yourself. until klutzman is gone and the whole property is rebooted (which still wont get rid of std and puckard unless they say its erased from canon) we're going to continue to get trash shows with garbage writing from hack writers. they arent just "woke" shows, they're complete abominations. anyone who watched puckard and can say they enjoyed it, were you even a fan of picard to begin with? how can you not realize they completely neutered his character and p stew was all for it, he's even admitted to it if you watch the behind the scenes interviews and read the articles.

someone else said a few days ago that std and puckard were doing well as far as viewership. where are you getting that fantasy from? nerdrotic with 200k subscribers gets more views on his youtube videos than these shows get. next to no one is watching these shows, let alone paying for cbs all access. you can even tell when you never see high engagement on youtube videos about these shows and its never trending on twitter. theyve wanted to fire klutzman for a while now but they clearly cant due to contracts. they brought in chabon half way through shooting puckard just to try and get klutzmans stink off of it, but not only was that not going to happen but chabon is almost as bad a writer as he is. now chabon is gone... after one season. does that sound like things are going well over there? lol no it sounds like complete and udder failure.

if you want to know more without doing much if any research, just watch a few livestreams of nerdrotics or doomcocks, or watch the inquisition on sunday nights where they both stream together and talk about all of this. but we know that fans of this crap dont want to hear it, they're locked down on the way they want to think about it and thats that, so they "dont have time" to watch and learn whats actually going on.

all of these properties are done due to trash writing and woke agendas. star trek, star wars, dr who, terminator, breastworld, wokeman, charlies angels, james bond, birds of woke, the rest of us part 2 and marvel and witcher are on the fence. theres plenty more but you get the idea.

 

[Doodlebob7]

for anyone whos interested in listening to two guys who actually love these properties and hate what they have become like a lot of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucS...4Y33uh5CavhYg4YT9FFG_vfh0UMvApWN9D81ZNWnxrQWY

we dont hate on this stuff for fun, we just call it like it is and dont support garbage because we actually care about these franchises and want to see them made by people who actually give a **** again. if i have to read about someone loving something thats crap then i can say how something thats crap, is crap. its called free speech.