I like the basic IDEAS of Field of Fire—and the surprise of seeing something like this in the Star Trek universe, which in turn gives the ship's counselor more to do than Troi ever did—enough that it carries me past the (very uneven) execution. I do wish they'd made a bigger thing out of the idea of a murderous…

Yeah, I'm aware Whedon has basically nothing to do with it at this point, but you'd think the writers would look at his other shows and notice how he tries to avoid tropes whenever possible.

Even if they don't get together, though, it's kind of annoying to devote so much screentime to it. The show had a strong start but I feel like it's squandering the comic potential of a police station on cliched sitcom shenanigans.

I love Brooklyn Nine-nine, but I'm consistently frustrated that they have TWO will-they-won't-they pairings, neither of which is very interesting. They threw a monkey wrench in Boyle-Diaz pretty quick, but you know they're coming back to it (if they don't, I'll be pleasantly surprised). And for a while there I thought…

It's especially annoying when what the characters are saying isn't particularly incomprehensible to anyone with a decent vocabulary or a 12th grade education. I'm rewatching Fringe and the first season has Peter's job description, literally, as "translating for Walter" which even HE points out "anyone could do".

The difference between DS9 and Babylon 5 was that DS9 was far more loose and improvisational, which served it well. Rather than carefully laying out long-term goals, they'd develop a new idea and then lay another one on top of that in a later episode, and so on. This sometimes took them into awkward places, but it led…

>> (when did she get knocked up? Last season? WTF?)

I'd argue that, all else being equal, if you create a character and someone makes a movie or cartoon or lunchbox of that character, you're owed a cut of the profits even if it happens decades later. I mean, there may be nuances and exceptions, but that's my baseline. When that fails to happen, I think of the creators…

Not wholly—I mean, there have always been rich people trying to screw over the little guy—but surely we can agree this is pretty small-scale stuff up until the corporate era?

Sure, I'm just saying, when authorship was known (as opposed to folktales told around the campfire) it was credited to the actual author. Even Snow White and so on was credited to the Brothers Grimm or Parrault or what have you. No one said "Well King So-and-So was the patron of the work, therefore he owns the…

Unless you're possessed of a functioning, logical brain, capable of drawing inference, of course.

OK, fine. Everyone's getting sick of me arguing with concern trolls in this comment thread, but hey, I'll give it a shot:

No, I was conversing like a human being does.

He's presenting an argument for why creators shouldn't be able to claim ownership over characters. Which means Marvel's business practices are OK, so it's OK to see their movies. Can you not see this?

I was being hyperbolic, dude. Standard conversational gambit. Why are you so determined to split this hair?

Huh? I wasn't accusing you of anything. I'm talking about other people in this thread.

What? My point is that people are using convoluted, equivocating arguments for why it's OK for them to see these movies. Of course they're not literally saying "YAY BIG CORPORATIONS! BOO CREATORS!" I cited Hipster Name as a guy trying to argue that apparently there aren't any "real" creators of these characters. Read…

I thought my pet issue was the issue we were discussing.

There are quite a few people arguing for seeing the movie even if the creators aren't getting compensated, because the enhanced visibility will help (not a completely silly argument, but it does conveniently allow you to watch the movie guilt-free). "Ironic Hipster Name" above is arguing that we shouldn't care about…

This is the unfortunate nature of unionization, though. There are always "company men" who believe they're getting a better deal under the current system and will fight it. I hadn't heard of resistance during the 70s (I know Bob Kane fucked over a lot of people by siding with DC/National in the 40s) but that's a shame…