The ability to come with this kind of ideas is a product of human biology too. We have both the species self-preservation instinct and the brains smart enough to realize that we are too powerful to act like a bunch of chimpanzees without wiping our species off of the face of the planet. The pups are taught things because their species evolved into teaching their young. The Starfleet were the intended sheepdogs of the setting. It's DS9 writers fault for not understanding this. Attempted genocide of the entire species isn't taking it too far? And the final episode of the Voyager series and the DS9 development of the pure warship Defiant class shows that there's a potential for other solutions. That the Federation aren't Star Wars New Republic-rate suicidal imbeciles. That they're peaceful, but remember about being prepared for war. The fault lies with the writers. First they came with an absolutely overpowered antagonist, then with the lazy clandestine solution except they didn't have to go either way. This was also rendering their own anti-Dominion alliance story pointless. The seeds for writing it in a different direction always were present in the franchise, but the writers opted for making it unnecessary gritty.
The concept is the same with humans and wolves - actions have consequences. Our brains contemplate more, so in that sense, yes, we evolved, but it's about thinking. Realizing there is a difference between good and bad, right and wrong - that's values based. The irony here is DS9's pilot prologue takes us back to the time when TNG demonstrated how all of those dogs were slaughtered. In response to attempted enslavement and destruction of multiple societies across multiple planets? The Dominion started the war. It's not like Section 31 personal woke up one day, had a meeting and decided, "hey, there are some liquid people in the Gamma Quadrant who need to go. Let's wipe 'em out!" without any sort of provocation. That virus which they were infected with came towards the end when there was still no certainty that the war would end in a victory for the Federation. An aggressive enemy which does not negotiate, has a foothold in areas near you (Cardassia) and then acquires another aggressive ally (the Breen) who are using weapons which disable 2/3 of your fleet (Fed and Romulans) leaving only 1/3 of your fleet available (the Klingons) to deal with the front line. The ultimate goal of the Dominion is to destroy, conquer, and enslave the people of the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan Empires. And it was really without any provocation aside from their own paranoia. WHO was taking things too far???????????? So what? So the idea of a powerful, aggressive species should never be explored in Trek? People seem to forget that facing death and destruction, and how we act and react in those situations is part of the human condition. TNG did overwhelmingly positive and uplifting episodes, and that's good for showcasing human ideals. But how will people react when the ideas face a constant and persistent challenge? That's part of the human condition also - FIGHTING to preserve ideals and one's way of life. And I would argue that TNG sowed the seeds of that when they created an "overpowered antagonist" with the Borg. There's still no negotiating with them. DS9 can at least claim that as another one of its successes.
The ability of thinking and realization is a direct product of the biology too. The show writers, mostly. If you're focused on writing the things this grim then the solution is going to be grim too. Focusing on this in the prologue is on the show writers too.
I think it's partially because of her parents - her dad was unhappy. His own father was killed in combat during WW II, and the guy his mom remarried was a jerk. And then her mother was always feeling like she was not well liked in her own family and separated from them. So you have two unhappy people who got together and had a kid, then had another kid (brother) who has Asperger's, and she ends up becoming a very angry, unhappy, and resentful person. To be fair, she grew up in an area of LA which is fairly unlikable, and she had back problems and a botched surgery since the age of 18.....but at some point, you have to take a step back and realize that while you have zero percent control of other people and what goes on around you, you have 100% of how you feel and how you look at life. She also needs to do some self-reflecting and understand that she takes joy in the suffering or shit-talking of people she dislikes. Seriously, she's 43 and has this high school level perception of people. She hasn't realized any of this yet. She may never get to that point, either, but that's her problem. Picard said something once that really stuck with me - it was about people being complacent in their misery...that it was "comfortable, like old leather." It's a true statement.
Byproduct - if we have bad values, we won't become good unless the values change. Our biology will not change that. Our thoughts about good and bad, action and consequence will. Biology doesn't care about good and bad or action and consequence. It cares about results. Again, their idea of a powerful, aggressive species should never be explored in Trek? Fighting to preserve ideals and one's way of life are part of the human condition.
The "byproduct" as you are calling it, is the reason why we didn't end taking actions with consequences leading to this planet ending as a wasteland of irradiated soil. It's the result. It's a fictional universe. The writer can come with any way of overcoming the adversary. I don't see much attempt at preserving ideals here and that's on the scripting. From now on anyone can be duplicitous and say that in this continuity the Federation was preserved by acting against the ideals.
Correct, and there's no contention here on this matter. What's in bold is exactly why they did what they did. "The writer came up with" THAT way of overcoming adversary, and it is 100% valid a direction to take. The human condition doesn't cease to exist when it deals with war, religion, and having to make choices which sacrifice personal morality for the sake of the greater good, or saving lives. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The search for moral purity is not only a fool's errand, it's egocentric. **I** must feel good about everything **I** believe in order for this to be considered good. That's rubbish. You try your damnedest to do the right and moral thing in as much as humanly possible, but there are times when the situation doesn't allow for that. That's life. People remember Q for his antics and dickery, but the lesson he was trying to teach in Q Who was: "You're not as grown up as you think. There's much more you have to learn about yourselves - your strengths and weaknesses. You may think you're strong, but there is always someone who's going to be stronger. Are you prepared for that?" And it's in those scenarios when we must make sacrifices, both physically and morally. You think Kirk wanted to kill his crew and V'GER in TMP when he gave Starfleet Order 2005? Of course not. But certain situations in life arise when a person or people must make a sacrifice if needed. It's one of the most central aspects of the human condition.
Nice modernized recreation of the TOS era bridge: I must say that I don't care about the legal sh*tstorm around this project, coming with a good looking modernization of the TOS interiors is a feat. Well, more than a half of this franchise is about arguing technicalities one way or another...
CBS is always going to have egg on their face for the way they went after the fan film community like that.
They are hiring people for Season 4 of Discovery according to the industry press. So I guess that means someone is happy to still pay for it then. I wonder if they reason they have to keep making it is to write it out of all continuity in it's last season perhaps ? As supposedly the Dark Federation plot isn't going down to well with some - even more so when it's shared with the Picard show from the other end of the timeline. I honestly don't even know is Picard will even have any Star Trek content worth a damn in it until the end of the season and even that might be more me being hopeful than a legit expectation. This such a strange time they have 6 or more TV shows in production or pre-production, when it's still somewhat uncertain if more than 2 of them even have much of a market for them - (Pike and Lower Decks being the most likely to find an audience) & It remains to be seen if in 5 years time Picard and Discovery will be things people wish they could forget having ever existed (like I notice some people do to Enterprise and Voyager & the TNG Movies). I suspect the drama surrounding Star Trek will be way more compelling that the shows themselves for sometime to come.
Well Section 31 employs people like Georgiou, who´s up there in the "megalomaniac genocidal tyrant" list.
There are times when men of good conscience cannot blindly pretend that DIS is in the continuity with anything, anyway. Given all the clashes and contradictions, I'm going to take all of this as an another divergent timeline. Good thing I'm not short on handwavium.
Or, crazy theory, the series is actually successful for them despite a vocal minority's claims otherwise and they keep making more because it's good for their bottom line.
Or, they just got somebody else to pay the bills for them, so that it doesn't really matter that much to CBS if it is successful or not. It's no secret Netflix reportedly paid CBS ~$6million an episode for the international rights, which means Netflix essentially paid the entire budget of the first season (haven't seen any figures for subsequent seasons, just that the first episode of season 2 went way over, leading to the rest of the season getting cut back). And Netflix supposedly isn't all that happy with Discovery, which is why they opted not to pick up the international rights for Picard, leading to Amazon picking up that show instead.
Congratulations, you've covered the first season of Discovery with a two year old article. Even if Netflix is unhappy, somebody's obviously happy enough to pay for a second, third, and apparently fourth season and Amazon certainly doesn't seem unhappy to pick up Picard. This notion that studios will just produce more content to save face is absurd. Netflix cuts shit down all the time when it doesn't feel it's up to snuff (RIP Daybreak, gone too soon). And CBS All Access has shown their willingness to cut losses too, you don't see 4 seasons of Strange Angel
Yes, it's a two year old article, I don't see how that changes anything. The first season was still essentially paid for by Netflix, with CBS not having to lose a lot of money itself, as that article points out. That's also why I pointed out I haven't seen details about subsequent seasons, I haven't seen any articles that talks about who is covering what. The only other budget thing I've seen, as I said, was that the first episode of season 2 went way over, forcing them to cut the budget for the rest of that seasons episodes. We're not exactly privy to all the legal stuff here, but it's probably a good bet Netflix is locked into some kind of contract with CBS, with Netflix still paying a lot for the international rights, despite not being happy with the series. It's also way too early to judge how happy Amazon is having picked up the international rights to Picard, considering that show hasn't even premiered yet. I'd also point out, I didn't say anything about a studio producing more content just to save face. Again, CBS has a pretty sweet deal on Discovery with Netflix covering a large part of the bill for them. And for Daybreak and Strange Angel, honestly, I don't know either of those shows. But as far as I can tell, Daybreak was strictly a Netflix series, not something they were paying somebody else for the rights to. That makes a difference. Same thing for Strange Angel.
Well if you listen to the rumour Mill Amazon wasn't super familiar with how the situation was with Secret Hideout & CBS at the time so they may have been under the impression they were buying something that was a sequel to TNG & not a political show with direct continuity to Discovery. If they'd know that they might have some reason to not be fine with that such as it cross-promoting someone else's show in the international market. That said it might be possible that Amazon is the one partly paying for Discovery Season 4 if Netflix finally managed to get themselves out of the 5 year deal they tied themselves in - or it may simply be that the ONLY reason the show is being made is Netflix doesn't want to get sued by CBS/Viacom for the development costs- but if they only had an agreement for 5 years then if a 6th season happened (yeah right - not very likely) that might be the only indication that the wanted it still and are not being blackmailed into taking it. Though I did hear that Channel 4 in the UK were dumb enough to pay way to much money for the 2nd run rights on Discovery (possibly Picard too) so that would have given them some mad money to spend perhaps. The show is a Star Trek show that isn't for Star Trek fans though - you can't really change that limiting factor - which seriously undermines the potential merchandise sales with that hardcore. And it's not so much that something isn't successful on some level - so much as it's that something isn't as successful as it could be if it wasn't alienating a portion of it's potential audience as we see else where with batwoman or Doctor Who. which are also chasing the audience they want to have (which may or may not exist- likely not) - TV companies need to realise they have a fiscal obligation to not narrow their market spread through political ideologies over story - if they were more subtle about it then more people would turn a blind eye to preaching, and to be fair to Discovery it's no where near as Preachy as Batwoman or Doctor Who. It's just very poorly written indeed (yes even by Enterprise and Voyager standards). Discovery is a show that all flash and no subtance like a Fire works display it's all ohs and ahs and then it's gone and you forget it by the next day.. It's very much disposible TV - no lore crafting not depth - just shallow Pew Pew with a haze of mild nastyness on top. I can say all that as someone who watches the show and will continue to watch the show - I am just also aware that it really could be a heck of a lot better even within the boundaries of it's own self-imposed limitations. For example character consistancy really is very patchy indeed... Key examples being Saru and Tilly. They are also labouring under this crazy notion that anyone could actually consider Little Miss Mutiny likeable. Especially when she's standing there being willfully insubordinate to Pike on repeated occasions. Not to mention there is the whole issue of her role on the ship being really vague she seems to be Ship Princess of something as she doesn't actually seem to have a proper role in the command structure - she just seems to have Elbowed Airiam out of the way as 2nd or now 3rd officer & jumped over Stametz in rank. The show suffers from Bad Reboot levels of not making a lick of sense, which I suppose might be considered part of the entertainment value of it at this point to see how they can manage to make even less sense for a 3rd year.
Plus there's the rumour that Netflix is contractually linked to Discovery for several seasons: as long as CBS makes it, Netflix has a deal that they get it and have to pay for it. Smart move when it started and a new ST show seemed like a sure winner. Dumb move in case the show isn't the success everyone thought it would be.
