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rivendellroseThere's a trailer for Star Trek: Discovery!
An actual realfax trailer, not the bullshit teaser crap that they put up last time! This one has actors! Speaking lines! In costume and makeup! This show might actually happen sometime!
Okay, while the excitement is still real and hasn't yet again been replaced by a gnawing sense of dread and the certainty that no other Star Trek will ever be what Deep Space Nine was to me...
Dear CBS:
Please, for the love of all that's holy, don't fuck this up.
The world has kind of gone to shit, lately, and I could really use having a Star Trek (no, the movies don't count - the movies, to me, have never counted) to look to for hope. Also, you've delayed so long that you're once again going to be coming out around my birthday, so for my birthday, I would very much like you to not fuck this up.
Love, Me.
So, friends - what do YOU want from the new series? And how much do you think your tiny little hearts are going to be crushed and broken by the reality that we shall inevitably experience come "sometime in the fall?" And what the fuck is up with those "Klingons," anyway?
Edited to Add: For my first specific request, I would like this tweet to be some kind of stupid joke. Because that shit looks like their redesigned Klingons got really drunk and saw Tom Cruise's new The Mummy movie and got some kind of bizarre resurrection idea and no fucking way am I putting up with that kind of bullshit.
Oh god, it took them all of ten minutes to poke a hole in my enthusiasm. This going to be a nightmare, isn't it?
An actual realfax trailer, not the bullshit teaser crap that they put up last time! This one has actors! Speaking lines! In costume and makeup! This show might actually happen sometime!
Okay, while the excitement is still real and hasn't yet again been replaced by a gnawing sense of dread and the certainty that no other Star Trek will ever be what Deep Space Nine was to me...
Dear CBS:
Please, for the love of all that's holy, don't fuck this up.
The world has kind of gone to shit, lately, and I could really use having a Star Trek (no, the movies don't count - the movies, to me, have never counted) to look to for hope. Also, you've delayed so long that you're once again going to be coming out around my birthday, so for my birthday, I would very much like you to not fuck this up.
Love, Me.
So, friends - what do YOU want from the new series? And how much do you think your tiny little hearts are going to be crushed and broken by the reality that we shall inevitably experience come "sometime in the fall?" And what the fuck is up with those "Klingons," anyway?
Edited to Add: For my first specific request, I would like this tweet to be some kind of stupid joke. Because that shit looks like their redesigned Klingons got really drunk and saw Tom Cruise's new The Mummy movie and got some kind of bizarre resurrection idea and no fucking way am I putting up with that kind of bullshit.
Oh god, it took them all of ten minutes to poke a hole in my enthusiasm. This going to be a nightmare, isn't it?
no subject
Date: 2017-05-17 11:51 pm (UTC)I'm still annoyed that it's a prequel (we didn't LEARN from Enterprise, eh?), and that it's about Klingons (I don't care. I'm never going to care. You can't make me care.)
However. It's Star Trek. It's got Michel Yoeh in it, apparently. I'd like some optimism and team work. Not relentless grim (why I preferred Voyager to DS9). Some episodic stuff in all that arc plot. Some aliens that are actually alien. As few Klingons as possible (and NONE that look like that). No "humanity's greatest power is heart!" Lesbians.
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Date: 2017-05-18 12:05 am (UTC)I don't necessarily mind that it's a prequel so much as I mind that it's a prequel that will inevitably pretend Enterprise didn't exist. Enterprise was largely crap, sure, but... I am very weak to the Andorians and I generally have a lot of affection for Scott Bakula, so I have feelings about that whole series being shoved under the rug.
I'm with you on being soverydone with the Klingons, but of course they and the Vulcans seem to be totally inescapable at this point. Sigh.
Michelle Yeoh and Sonequa Martin-Green seem to be a very good start from the casting side, as is Doug Jones (playing the weird hairless, tuskless Nausicaan looking dude who can apparently sense death, IDEK how that works, but I love the actor from other stuff, so I'll go with it on a provisional basis).
I will refrain from trying to convince you how very optimistic DS9 really is, because I'm sure
I have heard that there is a canonically gay character, but unfortunately he's male, so no lesbians yet. YET. COME ON, SHOW.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-18 12:19 am (UTC)I'm fine with Vulcans, especially if they get treated better than say the Baseball episode in DS9, or any of the ToS stuff that was totally Team!Human. There's another want, aliens talking to each other about things other than humans. Not just aliens learn to be human or humans learn from aliens.
(Basically if I wanted to watch Babylon 5, I'd watch Babylon 5, not DS9. I don't REALLY need War War Grim Death in my Star Trek.) Anyway, different tastes, and all that. Though I'm admittedly mostly just sick of hearing about how DS9 is The Best, and Voy is The Worst. Not from you, just generally.)
I'm pretty fine with ignoring Enterprise, but I've only seen four episodes, and prefer my Bakula in Quantum Leap.
I'll take a gay dude. I have lesbians in other shows.
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Date: 2017-05-18 12:23 am (UTC)There's another want, aliens talking to each other about things other than humans.
Lol. Yes! And also look, we've discovered a new sci-fi corollary to the Bechdel test! XD
I hated Enterprise when I saw the pilot way back when it aired, and ignored the ever-loving shit out of it for roughly 2 decades. But during that time I happened to catch one tiny clip of a later episode that stayed in my head, and then... when I was really down last year and needed something, the episodes of it with that character, played by one of my favorite actors, were there. So I have fond feelings for it despite it generally being shit.
It's even a gay dude played by one of the main original dudes from Rent, if that has any meaning to you (says the recovering Theater Geek).
no subject
Date: 2017-05-18 12:38 am (UTC)I liked Tuvok and Torres bonding in a couple eps. And in DS9 Dax and Kira (and Kira and Odo of course, though the romance didn't always work for me). More like that please.
I've heard the later seasons of Enterprise are much better. (Though I caught a bit of one on TV and couldn't tell if I was watching Galaxy Quest or not), and once they got over having a captain who hates aliens (Who thought THAT was a good idea for a Star Trek show!?) I'm sure it picked up, Vulcan love triangle or not. Maybe someday. I do have friends who love it.
I don't have a lot of investment in rent either, but I HATE that the reboot beat tv trek to the punch. I gather there was to have been a gay character on Voy but the network stepped on it. Maybe Harry? Would have given him something to do, I guess.
ETA: No character Trying To Be Human. Enterprise at least got that right.
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Date: 2017-05-18 04:56 am (UTC)ETA: No character Trying To Be Human.
Agree!
(And I like that Odo had his identity angst but came down pretty firmly on the "I am what I am, and that ain't human/Bajoran/"solid" even while he was clearly culturally different from the rest of his species. I <3 Odo & his grumpiness.)
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Date: 2017-05-18 05:22 am (UTC)Yes yes yes yes yes! It was so nice that Odo's whole identity crisis never came down to "So I must try to be like the people around me." No, Odo gets to be his own person, damn it.
He was my very earliest Star Trek crush other than Spock, because I was a very strange child and always attracted to the odd-man-out character.
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Date: 2017-05-18 02:42 pm (UTC)Odo and Spock really worked for me, even though Spock got WAY too much "you should be more human" from Kirk (and McCoy, but we weren't supposed to take him as seriously), including at his damn funeral. But Odo was great!
Data and the Doctor I could have lived without those plots. It looks like New Lady will be raised by Vulcans maybe, which would be neat to see.
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Date: 2017-05-18 04:45 am (UTC)That is a wrong opinion that is wrong. DS9 is the best, and VOY is the second-best!
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Date: 2017-05-18 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-18 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-18 12:25 am (UTC)I'm just really uninterested in nostalgia-driven plots about ToS, and I'm even less interested in the Klingon War.
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Date: 2017-05-18 04:52 am (UTC)Same, though if it were the Romulan War I'd be far more interested. Especially given Tobin Dax's plot in "Lives of Dax" about the invention of the transporter!
(I don't remember how Enterprise dealt with the emergence of that tech, only that IIRC in the first season they didn't have them yet. I have not seen very many episodes.)
((RR, your fave is played by Jeffrey Combs, right? That is a good reason to get into a character. :D))
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Date: 2017-05-18 05:08 am (UTC)Oh, man, I remember the Lives of Dax book vaguely. I can't remember any of the specific stories anymore, but I remember liking some of it very much.
My fave is indeed played by Jeffrey Combs. I joke that I'd been half in love with him for years, and then finally smacked into a character of his who was around long enough and not an asexual, amoral sleazebag like Weyoun, so I was bound to fall hard. The good Weyoun and Harriman Gray were already heart-breaking for me - Shran just stuck around long enough that I was able to love him completely. XD
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Date: 2017-05-17 11:57 pm (UTC)Those Klingons look, uh...more alien than usual? But also very odd. And spiderwebby? Hmmm.
(This show would have to be extraordinary to mean more to me than DS9 does. I mean, like, super mega amazing. At this point I'm holding out for "feels kinda like Star Trek and doesn't make me want to fling myself into the sun/cause a warp core breach." With a side of maybe a little canon gay, and if we're being very selfish, some Trills. No redesigned makeup there, and a decent treatment of the symbiosis thing if I'm reallllly getting my hopes up. BUT I'M NOT. *protects heart!*)
The first two movies were pretty much random action flicks with Star Trek logos slapped on. But I did quite like Beyond. The whole thing with the "old" spaceship that was basically a TNG bridge set won me over, as did Jaylah. And the Spock/McCoy scenes, and lack of main character/OC shoehorned-in het. I could happily watch a few more movies like that. But the movies have never filled the same hole for me as the TV shows.
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Date: 2017-05-18 12:11 am (UTC)And yeah, this show would pretty much have to be perfection for me to care about it more than DS9 - that show hit me from the ages of 11 to 18, and it is part of my goddamned soul. I'm so glad it's getting the attention it deserves, now (LATE), because I've always been of the "defend it with tooth and nail" attitude with that show. It has flaws, damn it, but it is MINE.
...ahem. So yeah, "this feels like Star Trek and doesn't make me want to kill things" is probably the best we can hope for. But I'm gonna hope for it, damn it.
I don't know if we'll ever see the Trills (or the Cardassians, who are kind of my grumpy crazy often-evil babies) again, but if we do I do hope that they handle symbiosis better. That had so much potential, and was often handled with so much fail.
Beyond really was great - it avoided SO many of the failings of the previous movies, and while Zach Quinto was still there he annoyed me a lot less this time around than previously. If they keep up with that type of thing I will be happy. But Star Trek has always been about the TV shows for me, same as for you. The movies are fun, but the TV shows are what counts.
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Date: 2017-05-18 04:42 am (UTC)DS9 hit me in my early college years, but that's about the same because that was when I was discovering sci fi and all the old 90's shows (after growing up under a rock) and I had SO MANY FEELINGS! (I didn't get into B5 until even later, but I love them both with a deep abiding passion; DS9 got to me earlier, though, and I won't hear a word against it. And yes, it does have a lot of hope in it. I'm not so into the Dominion storylines, but give me Cardies and Bajorans and Dax and Odo and Siskos and...yes. MY PEOPLE OF MY HEART)
ST Beyond felt like it was made by actual Trekkies rather than a Star Wars fan who wanted the paycheque. Ahem. You could tell they were into it as Star Trek, which was such a blessed relief.
In some ways I feel like TV storytelling has changed a good bit since whatever the gold standard was 20 years ago, so that's going to affect how this show turns out (and the same with the movies). So I'm willing to give Discovery a bit of leeway there. But oh, please be good! Please at least don't make me hate you, show! OMG there's going to be Star Trek teevee again?? Please be good!
*finds alien religion to convert to, prays fervently*
Damn, this show's gonna do me in, isn't it. This is why you don't do open canons for things you have feels about, self!
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Date: 2017-05-18 05:19 am (UTC)I am fond of the Dominion storyline largely because, as previously mentioned, I was always half in love with Jeffrey Combs, and also because I had a weird love/hate passion for Dukat when I was young and still love watching him swan around like the arrogant, clueless bastard that he is. I really felt like their storytelling hit its stride during that arc, too, although the episodes I love best tend to be the ones that aren't so much about the war as about everything else around it.
You're right - the way we tell stories has really changed in the last 20 years, particularly on TV, so that's bound to make a lot of difference. I'm sad that the show lost Bryan Fuller, because I really felt like I could trust him to handle everything well... but I'm still trying to be cautiously hopeful (and, y'know, not so hopeful that it breaks my heart just by not being everything I dream of).
It's been a long-ass time since I've had a fandom that's actually current and running that I cared about, and now I sort of am going to have two, if you count American Gods as a fandom (which I guess maybe I do? I don't know. I love it enough, but I'm not sure yet if the fandom bug will bite, exactly... meaning I don't know if I'll wind up writing fic or not). It's all very strange, anyway.
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Date: 2017-05-18 12:43 am (UTC)I'm just happy they're ruining the one race I genuinely don't give a shit about. Ruin away!
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Date: 2017-05-18 04:54 am (UTC)I have very few feelings about Klingons ("Dax shouldn't have gotten absorbed by Klingon culture, but Curzon Dax's Klingon friendships were cool" being one I do have). I just hope they don't go further into the "dark-skinned villainous characters" route. Sci-fi doesn't need more Ogrons, k.
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Date: 2017-05-18 08:56 am (UTC)NOTHING CAN PIERCE MY ENTHUSIASM except I'm trying to harsh my own squee by persuading myself that Michelle Yeoh's casting might be a fake-out and she could be killed off.
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Date: 2017-05-18 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 06:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 07:37 am (UTC)(I was just thinking I should check Wikipedia or IMDB. But this is promising!)
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 08:26 pm (UTC)But, to be honest, they were the one flat note in the trailer. Everything else looked a lot more nuanced and interesting. It's weird that they decided to make the Klingons so generically monsterlike.