You mean like what? They should do like “Braveheart?” No. Not that. Almost entirely fictional, that one. Also...Mel Gibson.

So...trolls, huh?

This awful woman reminds me of my mother (!) who has a habit of phoning the cable company twice a year to complain about all the “mexican channels” on her TV. “I told them to take ‘em off. I don’t want ‘em,” she says to me occasionally. 

I don’t get it.

To keep an eye on you, skippy. I’m keepin’ you honest. 

I almost agree with you. But, as I say in a post down below, every day you do horrible things to other people somewhere on the planet. Or your behavior supports their exploitation. Or you ignore horrible things because there are only so many things you can focus on in a day. You didn’t shoot someone in the head today,…

Ok.

Sorry this took a while. Lots going on!

I was looking for a way to disagree. And almost did, in a knee-jerk fashion. But after having thought about it for a moment, I realize that both you and SR (best Wonketteer on Earth, btw) are wrong. Dehumanizing other humans to the point where you can enslave them, torture them, mass-murder them is one of the defining…

“What do black people need before they can move forward?”

No. I mean it. If it works for you, good on ya. Lots of stuff works for me that other people cock their heads at. I’m just just saying that we’re discussing different things here. I never claimed that any character was always true to a very narrow definition of who they are. I would never say, ‘Oh, Spock would never…

Again, the artistic assumptions of the 1960's are different than today. The storytelling requirements for TV are different today than they were 55 years ago when each week was a complete reset and you only had to think yourself out of THIS week’s adventure. It’s a different landscape today, and if this show works for…

Anytime, man.

The difference is that we didn’t have any prior experience with Spock and Pike. Yet it’s plausible that he had captain in his early years who he cared about. And really, Spock’s mutiny wasn’t born of sloppy emotions. It was logical, as far as it goes. Spock was willing to suffer the consequences. And that he didn’t…

Actual pre-season writer’s room conversation:

No. We didn’t learn much about Sulu. But the artistic assumptions of 1966 don’t really apply here. And things like Michael committing mutiny is doing more to make my point than yours. The reasons behind, say, the TOS cast committing mutiny in the film series feels earned, because we understand the relationships…

Character development is an aspect of world building. But it’s not a thing done only by genre shows. Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, Better Call Saul, Halt and Catch Fire, Mad Men, Law and Order, The West Wing...all of these shows are brilliant in no small part because their internal logic is specific and…

If you can sit thru seasons 2-7 of TNG and really all of DS9, to say nothing of the original movie run, and not feel that you were watching people live in a very specific, detailed world...well, I don’t know what to say. World-building doesn’t mean all of it is good. It means it’s internally consistent as far as those…

Trek is hard to get correct right out of the gate, to be sure. But it’s not the number of episodes per season that helped right the ships in TNG and DS9, et al. If anything the time crunch and pressure to produce that much TV hurt them. It was time in between seasons, when they had the opportunity to breathe, that…

None of the three showrunners in the modern era have knocked it out of the park consistently. I don’t think anyone can do that with Who. When it fails it fails. But so do Star Wars and Star Trek. I’ll take this era of Doctor Who over five of the last six Start Wars movies and, frankly, over all the TV Star Trek going…