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Supplemental
037
Supplemental 37 – Holiday Feedback Fun!
It is a holiday supplemental edition of Mission Log, and John and Ken are getting the presents! Presents in this case are comments from you, which they are re-gifting. Re-gifting in this case means they are sharing your comments with the rest of the Mission Log listeners. Plus, a look at what is on the Mission Log calendar.
Re: a movie every year… Ken and John, you guys need to take over Paramount/CBS and maybe Disney, too. You seem to have this concept that you would make Trek movies without actually loathing Trek. That would be revolutionary in the C-suites.
I watched an episode of the Netflix series, The Toys That Made Us, about Star Wars. The film series has pulled in @ 7 billion but the toys have made @ 14 billion since 1977. So there is lots of money in merchandising as Quark would tell you. Paramount did a good job in the 90s of putting out lots of cool toys tied to TNG, DS9 and then it declined with Voyager and Enterprise. You also had Nemesis end the TNG movies on a down note. Enterprise suffered through the CBS/Paramount breakup. There were all kinds of really interesting plans for Star Trek to become a multi-platform entertainment juggernaut like we have seen with Star Wars under Disney but that dream died with the CBS/Paramount split. Also, I believe there has been a lot of turnover with the suits who run both companies. Now there are rumors of CBS/Paramount having people who realize that Star Trek can be a huge money maker for their companies if they learn to play nicely with each other. Discovery was the first major step to return Star Trek to cultural relevance and to be the anchor for the CBS All-Access streaming platform. Having QT team up with JJ Abrams to write a Star Trek film has the potential to take the movie franchise off in a bold new direction. I’d pay good Quatloos to see Star Trek: Reservoir Targs in IMAX 3D! Like John said, QT projects are often nebulous until we find out shooting the film has actually begun. That would mean the studio has financed the project to the point of no return and we will see something released. Just don’t typecast Samuel L. Jackson as a Starfleet Admiral gone rogue who has the vocabulary of an angry, intoxicated Klingon who drops F-Bombs like Dre drops beats. We certainly live in interesting times.
“Star Trek: Reservoir Targs”? Don’t give them ideas! LMAO.
Speaking of Star Trek TOS Home Video History – here it is ! :
http://tosbldvhs.blogspot.com/
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2097e3a2d371fac4cd1f238385a9dee87b384eca44b9a37345aba7a8858c9360.png
“Comments on comments”- Yet “No comment” on my “No Comment”!? – “Fascinating!” Anyways – thank you for the shout out guys ! š
Happy 2018 guys. Hope you had a great Christmas.
Thanks, Pete!
No problem. Look forward to the final few TNGās before DS9.
Discovery not covering big issues? Did you miss the dealing with colonialism, PTSD, anxiety, love, sacrifice, or animal experimentation?
And I sort of checked out of Orville after the pilot where we are told that drinking and driving is fun!
I hated it in the beginning, but was shocked to discover an interesting episode, like Majority Rule or Mad Idolatry.
I’ve been listening to you guys for about a year now. While I love your podcast I have to admit that I felt disheartened to hear that you’ve barely even watched all of Star Trek yet. I can understand not reading every last novel or comic book but it seems like it would be a prerequisite to have at least seen everything once.
Why? Thereās no right or wrong way to be a Star Trek fan – no admission test to be excited about something and study it.
Oh I completely agree. I was more surprised than anything. I wasn’t using it as a gauge for how big of fans you guys are. It just seems like the type of thing you’d want to go into with the big picture in mind. But I suppose it helps you avoid breaking the timeline. š
Gotcha – yeah I think for both of us, DS9 was on a time when we were both doing other things. One I was done with college and had moved, then settled into a new job, etc. I was back to catching up on TV/movies. DS9 sort of fell through the cracks, and I didnāt want to start in the middle with that one.
Well, in fairness, I binged on all Star Trek in a few months back in 2008 or so. I caught TOS on PBS when I could as a kid. Grew up with TNG and wasn’t interested in other Star Trek until years later.
I watched every ep of every series. That said, there are plenty I’ve utterly forgotten. So much for loyalty. Anyway, I am sure a ‘fresh’ approach will prove interesting. I warn yuz, though, DS9’s first season is littered with failed murder mystery dinner theater eps and TNG character appearances that don’t always work.
Feels like if we got through some of TNG’s worst, then we’ll be fortified for what lay ahead…
Well, I hope you’re fortified for ‘Emergence.’ I might even need a six-pack of fortification to get through that one.
I know I’ve left a few comments over the time I’ve listened to your podcasts. (You are the first podcast I ever listened to, by the way, and I don’t even remember how I found out about you.) I may have grown up watching the Original Series and Next Gen, but DS9 is my absolute favorite, and I have a feeling I’ll be a lot more vocal once you get there. I will try to contain myself. Thank you, John and Ken, and I look forward to hearing more of Mission Log!
Thank you Eryn – and looking forward to the discussion that comes from DS9!
I’ve been waiting patiently for you guys to reach DS9. Unlike TNG, DS9 was good from the first season. All the characters are much more developed than the characters in all other incarnations of Star Trek. Personally, I think even the minor characters like Jake and Rom are much more developed than major characters like Jordi.
Not really until Season 4 with Worf coming aboard that I warmed to DS9. It was very hit and miss before that. Quark and Odo though, great from beginning to end!
I actually started watching from season 4. When I was finished with season 7, then I started watching from season 1 to 3. By that time I loved all the characters so much even the boring episodes were easy to watch.
But I think my point is valid. Season 1 to 3 is very uneven. Some really outstanding episodes peppered throughout, but too many bad or cheesy episodes for my taste. DS9 peaked between Season 4 and the start of Season 6.
On the topic of Section 31… I understand the dislike for the organization; however, The Federation couldn’t exist without an intelligence community, especially a black ops one. The ideals The Federation lives by are fantastic, but Section 31 is an acknowledgment that only The Federation has those ideals.
There are Ferengi and Romulans and Cardassians and so on who take more than a nice conversation and a hearty handshake to deal with, which is evidenced by vessels on scientific missions packing photon torpedoes and by crew carrying around phasers that have a vaporize setting.
Citizens of The Federation work to excel at a vocation and better themselves. Well, unless it was breed out of the human race, there are going to be those who excel at doing Section 31 things — spying, infiltrating, creating technologies that could sink The Federation into war if other races found out about them (i.e. Pegasus). Better to put their talents to good use, rather than have them be a detriment and possible drain on society.
If The Federation is a shining light and beacon of hope and all that, then they are going to cast a pretty dark shadow. That shadow is Section 31.
I’ve been reading several books about the rise of the National Security state that was born out of the aftermath of WWII and the start of the Cold War. I thought I was aware of most of the activity that occurred around our nuclear weapons program, intelligence operations against the Soviets, interference with the affairs of foreign governments including supporting brutal authoritarians who were anti-Communist and subverting and/or overthrowing legitimate governments that we did not find “friendly” enough to our strategic desires, domestic surveillance of people labeled as a threat in the name of anti-Communism, the excessive abuses of power by the Executive branch under Democratic and Republican presidents, etc., etc., etc. Still, I continue to be surprised at the actions our government has undertaken that stand in defiance of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and our often proclaimed status as the ‘greatest democracy on earth’ and a shining beacon of freedom, liberty and justice.
Section 31 is Star Trek’s answer to our National Security state. The US military has some programs so black that even the president is not informed about them because he/she doesn’t have a “need to know” and the information is highly compartmentalized. I’d like to think that in Roddenberry’s Federation, the government would have evolved beyond such unethical and highly illegal activities. Maybe this is why we didn’t find out about Section 31 until DS9, after the Great Bird had passed away.
“Section 31 was created by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Executive Producer Ira Steven Behr, and resulted from his desire to look into the darker aspects of the utopia created by Gene Roddenberry. Behr was inspired by a line of dialogue he had written in “The Maquis, Part II” where Commander Sisko remarks that “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.” Behr remarked, “Why is Earth a paradise in the twenty-fourth century? Well, maybe it’s because there’s someone watching over it and doing the nasty stuff that no one wants to think about. Of course it’s a very complicated issue. Extremely complicated. And those kinds of covert operations usually are wrong!” (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 551)
Star Trek, being a reflection of and a commentary of our present day, has presented us an ethical quandary. As we will explore in DS9 & Enterprise, how do we square having a clandestine intelligence operation that operates on the ‘ends justifies the means’ mandate in the name of Federation Security versus the Secular Humanist Enlightenment view of humanity in the 22nd-24th centuries we have seen depicted on all of the iterations of Star Trek? This is a rich vein of ethics to explore as we make our way through the complex world of Deep Space 9 and compare it to the contemporary events that dominate our daily news feeds and social media alerts.
Excellent notes, Robert – thanks!
Now I just need an agent from Section 31 to wipe this disturbing information from my memory and life will be good!
Wouldn’t that me one of the Men In Black?
Bwah ha ha ha ha ha! That is too funny guys. You really think that Discovery will be the end of the Star Trek episodes and movies for you to discuss on this podcast? You have a permanent job until your biological functions cease or you decide to retire as there is no end to Star Trek. I can’t wait for your in-depth dive into Star Trek: Reservoir Targs in 2027!!!
Haha! Yep – oh we know we are in it for the long haul. No question…
Good to know Mission Log will be with me for while. Makes my Thursday.
Another pause!
You two just cannot let go of your TNG love-in can you?
Thank you for your hard work in doing these podcasts. Why CBS would not officially licence these I will never know. This is top stuff. Roll on 2018 – Keep it up please!
Thank you! And you know, maybe itās better that weāre not āofficialā in that respect. We can kind of stay under the radar to some extent.
Data gets to play a misfit toy.
This will apparently be The Year of Deep Space Nine. I was listening to an entirely unrelated podcast and the host said one of his show goals for next year is to get the word out that DS9 is the most underrated Star Trek.
Synergy!
Happy New Years, All. We celebrated by watching All Good Things and then consoling our dogs through THREE HOURS OF FIREWORKS. (Going back to bed now.)
i’m listening to the supplemental between 36 and 38 as we speak, and finally a mention of the orville. ( I didn’t know if you were allowed to talk about it.)
now, i’m NOT a family guy etc. fan at all, but I did enjoy mcfarland’s movies. So when I heard of the orville I thought, wow a 1/2 hour comedy in space with real people. i’ll give it a shot. then I saw it it was an hour, and I said uh oh, they’re really going to be trying here. they even have brannon braga as a producer.
well, as I tell my brother, who is also a fan, right now the orville is more star trek than star trek. it has brought me to an emotional response more then once. I was thrilled to see it has gotten a second season.
just to clarify, I do like discovery and will be watching it regularly, but they are doing the modern take on storytelling and it makes me a tad uncomfortable. I was alive and aware during TOS, so that is my point of reference. the orville fulfills that.
thanks for listening
I only recently got caught up with The Orville and find that I quite enjoy it for the most part. I was surprised by how much it skews towards serious sci-fi, so much so that some of the humor can actually feel a little out of place.
What bugs me are fans who act like The Orville and Discovery are in direct competition with each other. Well before either show came out, I kept seeing comments like, “I’m more excited for The Orville” from people who were already predisposed to be prejudiced against Discovery for one dumb reason or another (mad that they had to pay to watch, mad about the Axanar lawsuit, mad that the lead wasn’t a white male, etc.). The way some of them act, you’d think Star Trek is their ex-boyfriend/girlfriend and The Orville is the new person they’re dating to make their ex jealous.
Sometimes it just seems, as far as some people are concerned, like Star Trek is stuck in this unwinnable position no matter what it does. What nearly killed the franchise, from what I can see, was its failure to change with the times. Now we’ve got Discovery, which is obviously much more in step with modern trends in television and is taking more risks, but certain viewers are gravitating towards this other show that very much feels like a throwback to Berman-era Trek.