• LurkingLuddite@piefed.social
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    23 hours ago

    The ones who aren’t being dishonest pieces of shit feeding into divisivism are usually complaining about the lack of quality of the writing and/or the overt nature of ‘leftist’ messaging. Meaning anything remotely progressive like gay people existing or touchy-feely things coming from guys in a manner where those things are not directly relevant to the plot or don’t actually change anything end up feeling forced, and thusly feel like they’re sprinkled in just to “be progressive”.

    Often times there is some credibility to the complaints of the quality of writing, it’s just the ‘woke’ thing that triggered them to think about why the thing on screen is happening. Instead of noticing that it’s a general ham-fisted nature to the writing (which Trek basically always has in quite a few episodes of all series), they stupidly blame ‘woke’.

    That is the power of the brainwashing coming from the dishonest propagandists like Ben Shapiro and their ilk: Legitimate shortcomings become things caused by “the other”, instead of basic variability of quality.

    IMO, the bigger problem with Trek is Hollywood dumbasses like Kurtzman like pushing messaging more than writing good stories to challenge the alternate POV, which plays right into the shitty propagandists’ hands.

    There are plenty of old episodes that would embarass modern Trek with being progressive since they didn’t make it an overt declaration (tell the audience), but showed why the bigoted view was bad. Whereas new Trek loves to just… declare the progressive view as good, and then go on to Main Character the problem away: Poor writing even when you agree with the message.

    Sure, there are also quite a few hamfisted episodes of old Trek, but I’d much rather take 24 episode seasons smattered with ham than 10 episodes with an overarching story that loves to simply declare itself superior. It’s so much easier to ignore the poorly written episodes in old Trek when there is so much to take in, especially when there are some gems to find.

    IMO, the overproduction is also hurting a lot of newer IPs even beyond being a huge cost. It sets the expectations higher. It’s so much easier to gloss over a 6/10 in writing which is inevitable in a long running series no matter the message, when the visuals and the rest aren’t a 10/10 in every scene. If the episodes weren’t insanely expensive, long productions, they’d be able to put out a lot more episodes to drown out the bad ones. Instead, they give us 10, in a season that’s almost always a bit rocky to begin with in every series.

    I think setting expectation is one reason why Lower Decks gets so much love. It’s “just a cartoon”, so when the writing nails a mature topic, it feels like a proper treat.

    • gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com
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      4 hours ago

      Whereas new Trek loves to just… declare the progressive view as good

      can you cite example, not saying you’re wrong, but I always feel modern trek does representation without any clear messaging/opinion at all. Its a case of we “have these things” but fear actually using the things in a morality play. I’d be happier with modern trek if it actually took a proper side

    • pEg@startrek.website
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      4 hours ago

      There are plenty of old episodes that would embarass modern Trek with being progressive since they didn’t make it an overt declaration (tell the audience), but showed why the bigoted view was bad. Whereas new Trek loves to just… declare the progressive view as good

      Are you for real?

      • LurkingLuddite@piefed.social
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        3 hours ago

        Yes. I also said there was plenty of silly things.

        Two things can be true at once. Especially when there are far more episodes of previous Trek, and not only TOS.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      14 hours ago

      The reason people like lower deck so much is because it was obviously written by an actual Star Trek fan rather than someone trying to write generic science fiction and then slap a Star Trek aesthetic on top. Which was what discovery was like in the early days.

    • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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      17 hours ago

      I disagree that cartoons set lower expectations. I expected a lot from Lower Decks and that expectation was well satisfied. One thing LDS does benefit from is the 22 minute runtime. 45 minute episodes are too long.

      • LurkingLuddite@piefed.social
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        9 hours ago

        Cartoons don’t set lower expectations. They naturally come with a different set of expectations that happens to have more leeway with writing. Especially in comedies vs overproduced “serious” shows.