Some of the other series and movies miss the point more dramatically for me by just becoming space opera. Star Trek was always political.
I imagine it was too long and because he just died they chose to use his name.
Gandhi?
Mandela?
Like with Q, he has to give lectures to literal god! Perhaps shut up for 5 minutes to get more information?
Or when meeting borg...?
Look at the colors: a tribe of C-suite nerds zip around in an atomic powered space-faring Hyatt Regency trying to train the universe to Taylorize all production methods. Its protagonists are utterly entitled and classist, who teach war as the essential force by which their lives incur meaning.
It's is a soap-operatic long tail of Western empire indulging in fatuous "adventure", which amounts literally beaming into alien realms to cause disturbance and justifying it through dominion or ignorance, while the executives try to believe they've moved beyond themselves so they can feel noble.
As a dramatic art, the show offers some moments of transcendence, but these end up sequestered to the commercial dictates of the franchise, which is an epic advert for consumerist Americana.
I feel deep suspicion about anyone who regards cosplay as instructive about what makes for "good men with power". And as Vox is a notable outlet in the great system of commercial attention-whoring that defines our culture, I feel double the suspicion.
Also See:
Phase IV (1974) Futureworld (1976) Lathe of Heaven (1980)
A pretty good use of six hours.
But, if you watch the first season of TNG, it feels like there is a turning point where Patrick Stewart starts taking the role seriously (Symbiosis) and understands that he's depicting Starfleet as an institution and the restrictions (the prime directive) that institutions must enforce. The fellow actors also seem to take the series more seriously after that episode while before it felt campy.
It's clear he brought a gravitas to the role that inspired a team of young/new actors around him. As he later joked in Making it So, he once took things too seriously on set yelling "We're not here to have fun!" It became more than a job/role to him and in doing so he and the other actors inspired a science-inclined subset of a generation and brought Roddenberry's utopia vision to life.
tqi•49m ago
rhaynes•47m ago
vigilantpuma•45m ago
tqi•30m ago
My feeling is that while enjoyable and thought provoking, TNG is still a work of fiction, and as such favored entertainment and legibility within a 45 minute window over nuance or subtly. That meant there were clear distinctions between "good" and "bad" sides, and scenarios often felt like they were constructed backwards from an outcome/clever solution.
I think that in turn causes people to view the real world in the same way, except they are always the "good" side and solutions that require compromise and tradeoffs are seen as unacceptable failures.
Arainach•15m ago
fullshark•45m ago
PaulDavisThe1st•45m ago
ajeet_dhaliwal•42m ago
CursedSilicon•41m ago
Twice
criddell•32m ago
whalabi•41m ago
In this case it's like a what if: what if humans were the best they could be.
And that couldn't be less silly.
dyyd3333•28m ago
Avicebron•40m ago
andyjohnson0•38m ago
orev•38m ago
People tend to follow examples they’ve seen before, even if they know it was a bad one. When faced with a new situation, they might just parrot the bad behavior because it’s the only example they know.
swed420•21m ago
Maybe it exacerbated it, but The Office was mostly a documentary of preexisting behavior.
This is a classic breakdown:
https://ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-t...
Droobfest•14m ago
add-sub-mul-div•36m ago
tqi•26m ago
swatcoder•31m ago
BugsJustFindMe•31m ago
Teever•28m ago
An interesting question to ask: Is the world a better place because of the existence of Star Trek and the influences that it has on society?
How can we improve society with fiction?
DonHopkins•25m ago
Patrick Stewart as Macbeth ("Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZnaXDRwu84
gmerc•23m ago
happytoexplain•23m ago
fph•21m ago
nilamo•15m ago
ip26•9m ago