That makes sense!

Definitely there was local control over availability. I recall shopping for gifts and seeing walls of SW toys but no Trek in Ottawa.

Even in Canada, I don’t recall that they had wide distribution. They were also marked up quite a bit from the US price (well beyond the exchange rate). I saw them mainly in specialty stores, not Toys R US and department stores.

That was a very time limited counter example, and were largely unavailable outside the US.

And it may be a really important factor in explaining the loyalty of millennial guys in the US to the franchise vs other demographics and countries.

It looks like a 1970s toy. . . Which makes sense given who their target market is.

I would take it as another sign that the franchise has aged out were it not for the fact that it’s always had awful merchandising and licensing.

Let’s be frank that it was a male-gaze titillation to sell the show much like the frequency of ripped tunics and visible muscles were intended for women viewers. Both were introduced after the ‘more cerebral’ pilot of ‘The Cage.’

In any case, mini skirts were a fashion trend that constrained women and girls as much as ‘liberated’ them — Especially, as garters and stockings rather than pantyhose were the norm at the time. Looking at TOS now, I wonder if the show had to order specially made pantyhose or ultra fine tights.

While it was good for women and girls to be out of the 1950s tight-waisted skirts with crinolines so profound that they had to increase the spacing between lab benches and cooking class units (as was explained to me when I hit junior high), mini skirts meant that women and girls were constantly monitoring their exposure.

It’s no surprise that ‘pantsuits’ became an acceptable fashion option by 1970 and pantyhose rapidly replaced stockings.

There are industrial/cargo transporter platforms as well as industrial fabricator/replicators.

Perhaps only the ones in humanoid transport pads are set with the highest level defaults?

The averaging is the difference between a replicator and the absolute precision of a transporter.

The transporter has the level of precision and memory capacity to perfectly replicate real food.

The replicator is just a close approximation. It’s controlled for food safety and nutrition but the sense of smell and taste may be able to distinguish the food from a precise duplication.

Sadness is definitely why I’m feeling too.

Roddenberry had a vision of an international show in TOS, and his creation of an ethnically French captain for TNG.

Unfortunately, the franchise owners have never appreciated that and their focus on marketing first to the US market has kept the show and the movies from the global success they should have had.

With the Ellisons in charge, the franchise is likely to be all the more focused on the US without even the double-edged (often alienating) transparent American exceptionalism that has dogged the franchise.

Nice to see representation, if belatedly, of the newer shows.

That reworking of the 1968 model has a definite TAS vibe even if it was intended to be for the original series. I might be persuaded…

Appreciate having the review.

There are a lot of games out there. We used to buy games after trying them out at gaming conventions but we only get to the local ones now.

Paramount and Warner Brothers both have large studio backlots in the LA area. One wonders whether there’ll be consolidation there.

The Mississauga CBS Stages is a relatively modest venue. The biggest SFA sets were at Pinewood Toronto and the AR wall shared with Pixemondo — which is itself being organizationally deconstructed.

Also, there are incentives being offered by other US states such as Georgia, where Disney does much of its production. Moving back to the US may not necessarily mean California.

Anyway, it’s not particularly hopeful news for the industry overall especially in Toronto and Vancouver.

So sad.

I expect that any future production, if it happens, will be in the US.

Пироги are always a great choice!

Amazon took on another 3 seasons of The Expanse with about 130k, Netflix did an additional full 20 episode season of *Star Trek: Prodigy with 35k.

More than that, 32.5 k is a lot for one of these petitions in this amount of time. We don’t know what it will level off at.

The rate of signings is accelerating, with nearly 5k in the past 24 hours.

I wished they’d used an official image. It’s really odd.

But it was the first petition up so it’s the one with traction.

Cool. I think I’ll be supporting this one.

I’ve been having fun getting new and interesting games through kickstarter campaigns.

My partner is finding this eye rolling, as I’m roping them and one of our teens into play testing. But, I look forward to taking some of these to our regional gaming convention. It’s nice to be able to offer some fresh games with licensed media.

Meh

Cerebral is definitely not the way I would characterize Weir’s writing.

Middle school or YA science fiction is more like it. I first encountered his work when it was recommended for one of our kids.

We seem to share a reaction.

To be fair, I already had sense of Weir as an author was that he was limited in range, and would basically pitch the same kind of lone, MacGyvering hero, to anyone who would buy it — whether or not it was a fit for their show or strategic plan.

It’s the punching down to promote himself, while he’s riding a high, that’s earned my disrespect.

Weir’s reportedly doubled down in other interviews since, saying things along the lines that Star Trek has influenced all of modern science fiction except the more recent era of shows. I’m not going looking for that interview, but it seems that this isn’t a one-off comment on his part.

Regarding Rick Berman or other showrunners of a large collaboration, my reaction is more complex, because there were so many others involved in the creation.

While a cinematic feature is a huge collaborative undertaking, Weir sells himself as a kind of lone-wolf type author and so invites reactions on that basis.

There’s also the fact that Berman’s abusive behaviour was kept largely secret while the shows were running. So, my love of the specific shows and episodes was already set before I had the full context.

I’d known from friends in the fandom, with close connections to production, that the early TNG years were generally miserable for all involved but hadn’t heard as much by season four. Berman made the other showrunners be the media frontman, spokespersons for production during most of the 1990s. He wasn’t an eminence gris in reality, but might have well have been for the amount of information available for viewers to know what was actually going on.

Watching now, knowing how the actors and crew were treated, hearing their sides to the story, definitely does impact my experience on rewatching, and I am not as likely to rewatch as frequently as I was.

As another comparison, to someone who made himself out as more of an auteur creator, I find that I really can’t rewatch Josh Whedon productions at this point, especially Buffy.