StillPaisleyCat
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 hour ago:
Vanguard is darker even than DS9, so not everyone’s taste.
What it does have is not only Starfleet on-station but also 4 ships that are based there from a scout explorer to a Constitution class. It’s a lot of characters. Plus Tholians and Klingons. The mystery takes a bit to come together but it’s excellent.
The Enterprise and her crew show up occasionally but aren’t the primary characters. There is one Vanguard novel recently add that is Enterprise-focused and is one of the best books since Destiny.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 10 hours ago:
Directors, actors and art directors seem to be very happy to tread the ground of adaptations.
What we really have is some writers that want to tell their own Star Trek stories but aren’t doing a good job of serialization and studio executives who think that rehashing existing stories and characters will buy success.
And yes we have egos like Patrick Stewart’s holding his character hostage to his own reinterpretation of his character to be a reflection of himself.
But as we have seen with the character of Jim Kirk, there can be other actors to carry on the legacy.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 10 hours ago:
That’s not really the point though.
While Slow Horses, Reached or Silo had their print audiences, they are not adapted solely because they are reaching enormous audiences as books. They have become successful shows because someone made the case for adaptation to the studios.
Star Trek has been struggling to make serialized live action shows successfully. Why not go with what works and adapt that?
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 10 hours ago:
Tie-in writers are writers for hire.
They don’t own any of the IP for their creations. All the IP is owned by Paramount.
Star Trek television has directly taken concepts from Treklit for Discovery and Picard without any credit whatsoever to the print authors who created them.
Screenwriters who created guest characters like Locarno are owed some credit and residuals but these are very modest.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 10 hours ago:
There was a good recent thread on this. Much depends on your own preferences.
I posted the image of the first book of the TOS era series Vanguard because I think it would be excellent to adapt to television. It’s about Starbase 47 serving Starfleet in a region of Federation expansion and colonization. It’s somewhat dark and there’s a mystery at the core.
If you’re looking for the Alpha and Omega of the Borg, the Destiny trilogy is excellent.
If you’re into time travel, Christopher L. Bennett has a series of books about the Bureau of Temporal Investigations.
There was also a great anthology of novellas focused on the Starfleet Corps of Engineers.
There are numerous great standalones too.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x07 "What Is Starfleet?" 15 hours ago:
Frankly, we saw more in Pike’s face and heard more in his tone of voice — grim and determined - than any debates might have given us.
We were shown rather than told, and that’s a good thing.
This was arguably Anson Mount’s best, most sincere, performance as Pike since Discovery season two. There’s been a glibness in Pike in SNW. Both episodes 5 and 6 this season have turned that around.
It was also another episode where Una showed that she really was Pike’s First Officer and principal advisor.
- Submitted 15 hours ago to startrek@startrek.website | 14 comments
- Comment on Paused my DS9 rewatch to read "A Stitch in Time" and am so glad I did 1 day ago:
The Destiny trilogy by David Mack is my favourite. I liked it so much that I got a print copy of the omnibus.
Cold Equations is another popular trilogy by Mack.
Vanguard is TOS era series with books alternating in authorship by Mack and the writing duo of Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore. Vanguard, Starbase 47, is a somewhat mysterious Starfleet base of operations in a new region under colonization. While the Enterprise and her crew make a few appearances across the series, it’s primarily about Vanguard and the ships that are based there.
- Comment on What are your favorite Star Trek books? 1 day ago:
I liked all the Titan novels.
- Comment on What are your favorite Star Trek books? 1 day ago:
The Fall is a multibook ‘event’ in the Relaunch novelverse with each book by a different one of the regular authors.
It comes after Destiny and the Typhon Pact series of books.
While I like most of the books in all of these, there’s one author David R. George III whose books I find unbearably dull. He clearly knew his canon cold but his books are long on excessively detailed exposition, and short on dialogue or action. By the time I got to The Fall, I had learned to skip his books and just count on the recaps provided by the other authors.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x07 "What Is Starfleet?" 1 day ago:
I don’t see the documentary as the A-plot at all.
It was constantly present as a frame, but the episode wasn’t primarily about the documentary - it was primarily about how Starfleet captains and senior crew wrestle with ethical decisions when their orders do not align with their values, and how they seek to find information that can provide a rationale to pursue an alternative course of action.
Basically, it showed how important the crew that is present in the situation is and how that makes Starfleet more than just a military organization serving a military mission.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x07 "What Is Starfleet?" 2 days ago:
My partner and I really liked this one.
We both think it’s in the top rank of Star Trek episodes. In my view it may be the best of SNW to date.
It definitely should be the ‘For Your Consideration’ episode of this season.
The direction was excellent. This was one of the best dramatic performances from Mount as Pike since season two of Discovery.
My sense is that some viewers were mistaking the C-plot about the warring groups, for the A-plot about the Enterprise officers response to the ethical choice between orders and the free will of a sentient being or the B-plot about the making of the documentary.
I can’t agree that the episode was too short. The best Trek episodes are tightly rendered and leave lots of room for thought after.
- Comment on Star Trek: Prodigy - Supernova to be delisted, Xbox version on sale now 4 days ago:
More Prodigy erasure…
🤦🏼♀️
- Comment on Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Director Talks Challenges Of Shooting Kirk’s First Time In The Big Chair 1 week ago:
I can agree that they’re doing a brilliant job of what they’re doing.
For those of us who’ve been wondering about Pike since The Cage was first put back together and released in the 1980s, it’s been a bit disappointing.
Too much Spock, Uhura, M’Benga and Chapel, not to mention Kirk, too soon rather than a focus on Pike, Number One and the ensemble that preceded Kirk.
- Comment on Star Trek: Lower Decks Wins Two Hugo Awards, Celebrating Series Finale and 'Warp Your Own Way' Graphic Novel 1 week ago:
I didn’t expect the graphic novel to be able to so accurately capture the voice, tone and humour of the show.
It’s exceptionally good right down to the fine print footnotes on the bottom of several pages.
- Comment on Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Director Talks Challenges Of Shooting Kirk’s First Time In The Big Chair 1 week ago:
I had wanted a Pike and Number One focused show but the showrunners and Paramount seem determined to make this show about laying the backstory for TOS.
While I still love the show, I agree that it’s still frustrating that the opportunity to focus more on the unexplored characters.
- Comment on Simon Pegg Developed Star Trek Spinoff Movie About Jaylah; Wanted Archer’s Dog In ‘Beyond’ 1 week ago:
President of the Federation by all accounts, or past President.
Bakula is pitching a series Star Trek United. It seems everyone’s personal project to revive a character or run a show or movie is coming out of the woodwork.
- Comment on Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Director Talks Challenges Of Shooting Kirk’s First Time In The Big Chair 1 week ago:
I’ve got a rewatch upcoming with my spouse so I’ll take another look at if from that angle.
Perhaps that can help sort out whether the episode might have been handled better by another director.
Interestingly, I find it’s the Trek actors turned directors that manage mixed and shifting tones well. Frakes in directing First Contact, Dawson in directing The Andorian Incident, Robert Duncan McNeill directing Body and Soul are examples.
- Comment on Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Director Talks Challenges Of Shooting Kirk’s First Time In The Big Chair 1 week ago:
Yes, I’m not saying she’s not a capable director, but she doesn’t seem to have been the right choice for this episode.
Looking across the distribution of directors used for SNW, as well as Discovery and Picard, there definitely seems to be particular ones that are consistently asked back for specific tones.
Maja Vrvilo directed the season 2 finale Hegemony Pt I and the season 3 one New Life and New Civilizations. In season 1, she directed Children of the Comet.
Jordan Canning directed Charades last season. This season she was given Wedding Bell Blues and Four and a Half Vulcans.
- Comment on Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Director Talks Challenges Of Shooting Kirk’s First Time In The Big Chair 1 week ago:
I wasn’t positively impressed by the direction from Valerie Weiss in this episode.
Others have remarked about the tone being all over the map in this episode.
That’s a fair assessment in my view but it’s not a fault in the writing per se. Comic levity in the midst of intense drama goes back to Shakespeare and even Greek theatre, and certainly isn’t uncommon in episodic Trek.
But somehow it felt like the great pieces of the episode just didn’t quite come together. It doesn’t feel like the fault was in the editing or writing.
Paul Wesley’s portrayal of Kirk was excellent but at this point, I’m going to give the actor the credit over the director.
This is just the second episode directed by Weiss. The previous one was Ad Aspra Per Aspera which was a very different challenge for a director. What they needed was a director like Frakes who can do both the comic and the serious.
- Comment on About Star Trek Starfleet Academy blacklash 1 week ago:
Discovery became increasingly hopeful and positive as it went on.
Worth watching through season two at least if you haven’t already done so.
I liked seasons three and five a lot.
Season four has a really great classic Trek premise but the constraints of the COVID protocols led to some dialogue that’s over drawn out (Picard season two suffers the same).
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x06 "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" 1 week ago:
It’s fairly clear, from the tales of the Destroyer/scavengers that Uhura and the others recount, that these humans do not care who they are attacking or killing to gain resources and technology.
They are known to attack and raid colonies and destroy entire planets. While some were populated by alien species, others were human colonies.
They surely knew from previous seizures of ships that some were human crewed, by the bodies if not through language.
They had become a voracious pirate culture.
It’s not obvious that communication could have turned them away from destroying the populated planet that they were on course for.
The outcome of Kirk’s decision is that the Federation didn’t get the opportunity to try to communicate with them before destroying them as a last resort.
- Comment on David Ellison Shows Off His New Throne at Paramount, With ‘Top Gun 3,’ ‘Star Trek’ and ‘World War Z’ Called Priorities 1 week ago:
At least Ellison senior is giving is kids ‘loose change’ to cut their teeth on managing businesses before they need to take over.
As bizarre as that sounds, it’s better for the employees and investors than the alternatives.
Sumner Redstone fought to keep control until he was incapacitated, severely damaged the value of his legacy instead of letting his daughter learn to manage it.
- Comment on David Ellison Shows Off His New Throne at Paramount, With ‘Top Gun 3,’ ‘Star Trek’ and ‘World War Z’ Called Priorities 1 week ago:
Ellison seemed to be making an effort to reassure many of their longtime creative partners that they want them to stay with them.
He definitely isn’t looking to cannibalize and raise cash the way the Redstones were doing since the remerger. He’s determined to hang on to BET which I read as a significant signal.
One has to wonder what role Redstone’s desire to sell off pieces played in reintegration and failure to find synergies.
It also seems that Ellison has a personal vision of what he wants to do with legacy media that goes beyond just treating IPs as cash cows. I don’t think we’ve seen everything he intends and it sounds as though he’ll be very hands on in making sure the vision is realized. It will be interesting to watch.
- Comment on About Star Trek Starfleet Academy blacklash 1 week ago:
Many of us used to say the same about TNG, DS9 and Voyager bringing fans to TOS, TAS and the TOS movies.
But others of us just tried to give each show a chance to become favourites on their own merits.
In terms of the GenZs in our household, who had seen all the classic series by the end of middle school, the new shows have superceded their old favourites. One’s really into animated Trek, another loves Discovery. Star Trek Online has also played a role in retaining interest in the franchise.
- Comment on About Star Trek Starfleet Academy blacklash 1 week ago:
I’d rather talk about reactions to a show that’s actually happening — even if they are based only on a trailer and pre promotional interviews — than endless hyping and speculation about projects that aren’t happening.
Now that it’s no longer the officially sanctioned con, STLV’s panels seem to be set up to encourage producers and actors to hype projects that never even got to the development he’ll’ stage let alone any consideration for being greenlit. These include Tarantino’s bat-sh*t movie idea, Captain Worf, Legacy and the recently revealed Unity proposal.
- Comment on About Star Trek Starfleet Academy blacklash 1 week ago:
‘Fans’ fundraised to pay for full page advertisements in major US newspapers as a campaign to persuade NBC not to broadcast TAS even after its season one production was almost complete.
- Comment on Robert Picardo Talks Getting “Dramatic” On ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’; ‘Discovery’ Actors Want In Too 1 week ago:
I’m still frustrated that none of the Canadian cast got good development.
Almost all of them have significant awards within Canada. Most have other shows, films or are producing themselves.
While many of them took these roles for steady work, it was clear that they weren’t intended by the executives be more than regular wallpaper. It’s unfortunate.
I feel the same about Mitchell in SNW.
- Comment on How CBS Studios & Paramount TV Studios Are Divvying Up Streaming Series Slate: From ‘Reacher’ & ‘Cross’ To ‘Murderbot’ & ‘Clueless’ 1 week ago:
However, he has made Skydance profitable unlike another famous billionaire by inheritance who repeatedly went bankrupt.
It seems that his father’s approach is to let his heirs learn to run companies on their own with injections of capital that are staggering for others but just a couple years earnings on the family’s wealth.
- Comment on How CBS Studios & Paramount TV Studios Are Divvying Up Streaming Series Slate: From ‘Reacher’ & ‘Cross’ To ‘Murderbot’ & ‘Clueless’ 1 week ago:
It’s confirmed but after a second read, I think that’s clear.
Interesting that Skydance Studios television, which was a prestigious brand, will sublimate under the Paramount Television Studios name. It does show a certain commitment to the merger on David Ellison’s part.
