This is ProvidenceMine, and it's nice to be back.
I'm here today because I want to make a confession.
I had written an oped piece back in 2014 titled Leave It To The Fans, and it was about my feelings about how Star Trek was continuing on strongly because of the creativity of the fans and how I didn't believe that Hollywood could really do Star Trek anymore.
I don't really feel that way as of late.
For one thing, I had addressed the claim that Trek fans were lamenting the death of their beloved franchise because they didn't like what J.J Abrams had done with his rendition of ST:TOS. I had countered that I didn't believe that Star Trek was dead nor was it ever dying. I have since had five years to think about this statement, and I have since come to a conclusion that some fans might not like.
Star Trek might not have been dead, but in retrospect, it was indeed dying-and J.J. Abrams had nothing to do with that fact. I would venture to say, even dare to say, that J.J. Abrams actually saved the franchise. I can remember the time during the release of the first Star Trek reboot how Star Trek soared in popularity again, from an increase of hits on YouTube videos that focused on the show to a whole proliferation of new Star Trek blogs and fan fiction stories based on the reboot-especially new Spock/Uhura stories! I can tell you for a fact that a particular Spock/Uhura website that had been struggling with gaining readership exploded in hits after the first reboot came out. You might not have had a new collection of Star Trek reboot dolls, models and games, but the franchise got a much needed shot of adrenaline in its arm- so to speak.
Before J.J. Abrams' reboots, you had the film ST:Nemesis and the series ST: Enterprise- both of which were failures. Back in 2014, I had said that these works were poorly written and that's why they were failures. In hindsight, what I said was not really accurate. Yes, these works bored me out of my gourd. However, I think the real problem was simply what is called 'franchise fatigue.' I think these later Star Trek works were merely doing the same old damn thing that Star Trek had been doing for years, particularly when it comes to ST:Enterprise; the same formula of a different adventure each week, the same type of moralizing concerning the lesson of the week, the same drill. The only bold thing that Enterprise had ever done was cast Scott Bakula as a starship captain, because he was more of a quirky character actor than a conventional male lead type-everything else was the same old same. Many fans have said that the show started to get good during the fourth (4th) season, but by that time it was too late to save the show. I don't agree, because even the fourth season was offering nothing new as far as interesting storylines go.
The next number of years of Star Trek were basically Michael Bay styled reboots and numerous fan fiction literature and fan productions, most of them pretty bad but with some real standouts worth mentioning here-fan fiction by Wildcat, Djinn and Spock Jones (if you have not read any of their works I would highly suggest doing so) and in the fan production department was, of course, Star Trek Continues. ST:C was a glorious work of fan production in a sea of fan productions replete with cheap looking sets, way too much dialogue with dated sentiments, boring stories and wooden acting by has been tv and movie actors who were a bit long in the tooth (a grim faced Sean Young and a balding Walter Koenig, anyone?). Meanwhile, the works of the above mentioned fan writers were intelligent, well-written, and original in a sea of fan fiction that was poorly written and questionable in its content( a story of Uhura having sex with Spock during his Pon Far period where she is constantly being brutalized in a fashion that made me, at one point, put down the story it made me so physically ill!) These standout works were the exception-not the rule, sadly. And ST:C came out years later after the above fan writers have long since stopped writing, so we are talking about long spaces of time here.
I have to say that the fan works were not the only boring times of everything Star Trek for me. As a staunch lover of ST:TOS, I could never really get into any of the other Star Trek series. ST:TNG was so dull I stopped watching after only a few episodes. I was always puzzled by the love this series got, being less than enthusiastic about the stuffy and snobby British captain with the over-dramatic French name, his pedestrian first officer and the tiresome psychic woman who never seemed to dress like the rest of the crew for the sole purpose of showing off some cleavage. ST:DS9 never reeled me in because it looked boring with its talkiness, its alleged edginess and walk down a more cynical path seemingly not apparent in its coming attractions of episodes and clips. ST:VOY looked interesting only because the actor who had starred in such cult classics like Scenes From a Class Struggle in Beverly Hills and Eating Raoul(two of my favorites) was a part of the cast, but its clips fell flat for me. As for ST: Enterprise, I don't need to repeat my complaints here, only that this last installment needn't have been attempted in the first place.
When ST:Enterprise had ended, there was an even bigger void of anything worth watching or reading as far as the Star Trek Universe was concerned, and after the snooze fest of ST:Enterprise I was less than enthusiastic when I read the news that a new Star Trek series-the first series in years, was in development. To say that I was less than enthusiastic might be an understatement-one might even say that I was hostile.
I was not the only one who was hostile to the idea of a new Star Trek series. I read many comments around the internet of people who shared my concerns, and then, as time went on, the whole CBS Access detail certainly didn't help. In spite of it all I was determined to watch the first episode, the only one that I would be able to watch as a consumer who was less than willing to pay for yet another viewing service.
Well, the publicity started for the new Star Trek series. From what I could see, it looked pretty good. I loved the idea of the two leads being women of color, and I liked both of the actresses who would be playing these roles. Me and my sister were pretty jazzed to see the first teaser episode on CBS, and truth to tell we both liked it-liked it enough to sign up for a free trial of CBS Access. So, when my sister signed us up I was able to sit and watch, I think, five more episodes.
I hated the show.
Absolutely hated it.
I told my sister that ST:D (what I called it at the time because the avowed haters all over the fucking internet called it such-much to my ignorance) was a lousy series and that she should cancel the subscription. She was surprised, but she agreed to cancel, never having checked out the show herself.
Well, time past. During this time, I indulged myself in watching all of the nasty little YouTube videos lamenting how terrible this latest Star Trek installment was (these are also the same whiney YouTubers who were bitching and moaning about the latest installments of Doctor Who, Star Wars, and the upcoming Terminator movie-if that ever came out yet). At first, I ate all of this up, agreeing with every stupid comment and self-serving analysis, inaccurate or otherwise. And, as predicted, the show was always compared to that much latched-on security blanket The Orville, and guess which show was always found wanting. I did this for only a short period of time before I realized just how sick this all was. All of the vitriol that was aimed at the show seemed rather psychotic to me, with names leveled at it like STD ( the show is referred to as ST:DISCO-Thank you very much) and the SJW Star Trek (SJW meaning Social Justice Warriors, which the Right use as a derogatory term for activists).
If these butt hurt buttheads ever truly watched Star Trek, they would have to call the whole franchise SJW, now wouldn't they.
Duh.
While, at the time I didn't like the show I saw the madness of what was going on, not only on YouTube but all over the web, sadly. It wasn't enough for these fanboys and fangirls to obsess over their hatred for ST:DISCO, they seemed to be on a mission to destroy this show, tying the intrigue of a sexual harassment claim against the CBS President to this series (what that claim had to do with ST:DISCO is beyond me) to uploading aYouTube video claiming that the ST:DISCO shorts were failures when, at the time of the upload, only the first of the four shorts was being streamed at the time. Nonsense like this abounded, from the delusional 'white genocide' complaints by one group of trailer park idiots to a 'blacker than thou' idiot blogger with their equally delusional complaint about how there were way too many white people on the show.
You can't make shit like this up.
If you think that the fanboys and girls latching onto The Orville is pathetic (a well-made, perfectly respectable show-just not a great one by any means), I've seen some of these same people actually revisiting and reevaluating that snooze fest of a show ST:Enterprise (was it really all that bad? My answer... YES! It was!)
As you can guess, I stopped following these jokers-and with my dissolution with these Trekkers on their ugly behavior that included racists and homophobic rantings( true fans don't want dirty niggers on Star Trek, the captain needs to learn to speak English, the vast majority of Star Trek fans are white males) I just walked away from it all.
Well, could you imagine my surprise when my sister told me, months later, that she had never cancelled our subscription to CBS Access?! I couldn't believe that one! So, what I did, since I had found out that I had not finished viewing the whole series, I figured I might as well finish watching the damn thing since we were still paying for it. So, that's what I did. I saw the rest of the show, as if with fresh new eyes, and my experience this time around was...
WHOA!
I actually ended up loving the show!
How do you like them apples!
Granted, these were episodes that I had not yet seen. It was very possible that the second half of the season was actually a great season, and that the first half was a dud. The only way I could see if that was the case was to watch the whole season again. First thing I did was tell my sister that I ended up LOVING the show and that she needed to see it with me-the whole season! Pleasantly surprised, she agreed.
Guess what? My sister loved it too!
What a change from what I had originally thought about the show! Why, exactly, did I hate the show when I first saw it? I can't say I can answer that, except to say that looking at something with a fresh pair of eyes and with low or no expectations can really make a difference.
What can I say? Shit happens.
With this new change of heart, I started looking for YouTubers who actually enjoyed ST:DISCO. Sadly, there were not that many at the time in the Fall of 2018. I personally didn't think, nor think now, that this was a true representation of how the fans truly felt about the show. I strongly suspect that the haters, with nothing better to do, have made it a point to be chest thumping loud in their hatred of this show while the lovers of this show simply just enjoy the series and talk about it with their friends when they meet to hang out in the real world. The internet, I don't think reflects anything more than the haters' coopting of the web. So, with this in mind, I started to look, and I actually found a few YouTubers who like the show. One YouTuber is a young man who goes by the name Oliver( I think his channel is called Movies By Oliver-something like that. Anyway, he hails from Great Britain and his reviews of the show(which he does with a panel of his friends) are enjoyable, mature and downright refreshing from the incessant whining of how 'This isn't Star Trek' and all that other crap!
There are others that I can't recall, but they are worth a look ( one poor YouTuber who didn't see this show as Star Trek still called it 'bingeworthy' and got attacked by haters in the comment section).
However, the YouTube channel that I highly recommend is a channel called Trekspertise. This is a channel that does a lot of intelligent analysis, not only on ST:DISCO, but on Star Trek in general and other topics as well, such as the rise of toxic fandom. Check out this channel, as it is well worth it!
Speaking of well worth it-Season two started in Mid January and it started with a BANG! Me and my sister are loving the show! I will not give anything away except to say that gone is the talkiness of the past Star Trek shows, of actors standing around with what looks like a great deal of awkwardness while waiting for their lines to be read to them, of characters that reminds one of those from Little House on the Prairie except they're in space( I'm talking, of course, about those other Star Trek shows and not TOS), the Hallmark sentiments, not to mention the questionable acting and direction. This show is fluid, poetic, intense and packs an emotional wallop! And with some of the best looking male cast members on the fucking planet (Shazad Latif as Ash Tyler, Ethan Peck as Spock, and Anson Mount as Captain Pike who offers up the same virile sex appeal that the late Jeffery Hunter had) and its systems are go! The characters are all great-ALL OF THEM! The episodes so far have all been amazing!
I had said that ST:Continues was quite a ride! Well, frankly that goes for ST:DISCO as well!
I certainly must confess that I had a real sense of entitlement like so many of these other Star Trek fans in the past, thinking that somehow Star Trek belonged to me. If Star Trek did belong to me, I wouldn't have to include disclaimers on this blog now would I. Fans can have their outcry over what Paramount and CBS are doing to ST:Avatar (a fan production complete with has-beens aplenty and shaky screen effects that has raised over 4M dollars in crowd funding, therefore stepping over the line of what's acceptable in fan productions), Star Trek belongs to these behemoth companies-period. It really is sad to see Star Trek fanboys and fangirls act more like the wing nut Star Wars fans who drove the creator of the franchise, George Lucas, to ultimately sell Lucasfilm Ltd. to Walt Disney. Interesting since Mr. Lucas has done this that the Star Wars fanboys and fangirls have been having even louder, more hysterical tantrums since the Disney corporation has taken over creative control.
Who's sorry now?
I can assure you, it ain't George Lucas because he no longer has to worry about the toxic fandom that had spent years tormenting him and some of the actors from the prequels, like Hayden Christensen, Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd.
Let's be clear. If Star Trek is going to survive, then it has to go with the times. It has to evolve in its storytelling, characters, and visual renditions. I simply can't understand the complaints of the latest rendition of the Klingons in ST:DISCO! I think that the Klingons look great, more formidable and more alien. I love the idea that the Klingons place their dead within the walls of their mother ship. Gone is the irritating over merriment of the Klingons of the past with their incessant ale drinking and lousy singing-these new Klingons are terrifying! I also love the way that the Orions are realized this time around, with the men just as sexual and willing to please as their women. As for the complaints of the holograms used in ST:DISCO, when was it ever established that the holograms weren't even invented until ST:TNG? This represents the enormity of the absurdity when it comes to being a stickler for 'canon.' ST:DISCO is a product of the 2010s while ST:TOS was a product of the 1960s.
Sheesh...
Getting back to the Klingons, how did any of these fans react when the new rendition of the Klingons at the time first appeared in ST:The Motion Picture? Did any of these fans have a fit then? I know that one of the later Star Trek Shows ( I think it was Enterprise) tried to explain away the more human looking Klingons (as seen in ST:TOS) by saying that it was either a disease or some poor attempt at cosmetic surgery.
I kid you not.
Why O Why even bother with that?!
Again, another example of an absurd obsession with 'canon.' I wouldn't be surprised if the reason behind that bit of nonsense was because some canon stickling fanboy or girl scribbled a tantrum letter!
I can remember reading comments on the Variety website concerning the ComicCon tour of ST:DISCO( there were only two) saying how the executive producer Kurtzman was going to singlehandedly destroy the Star Trek franchise. I chuckled at this, because if anyone is hell bent on destroying the Star Trek franchise it's these fanboys and fangirls who want to be served up the same old same as before and are leaving ugly comments and hogging up the review section of Amazon with as many bad reviews of ST:DISCO as possible. They will ultimately create a situation where no one in the future will even want to touch their precious franchise with a ten-foot pool, leaving Star Trek only to these pitiful fans who will surround it with their sheltering arms as it truly dies by their accord, and their accord only. The Star Trek that these fanboys and fangirls love is the Star Trek that was dying until J.J. Abrams resuscitated it with much needed updating.
It is rather hard for me to take any of the whining from these fanboys and fangirls seriously, since these are the same people who had leveled intolerant, hateful comments at ST:DISCO! I used to believe that Star Trek fans were pretty cool, and that they were about egalitarianism-which doesn't seem to be the case at all. The specious claim that most Star Trek fans are white males has no basis in fact. As a matter of fact, what I found really awesome about the Star Trek fanbase was that they were diverse! One gay man had said in a documentary on Star Trek fandom was that he loved Star Trek because he could see himself in space along with everyone else! Right! That's the power of Star Trek! Get it, wing nuts ?!
I really don't know what happened to these Star Trek fans and how they became so ridiculous (one female fan postured in the comment section of some website that if Ethan Peck turned out to be gay like Zachary Quinto then she would forget even watching this new Star Trek. A peak into this woman's profile at this site revealed a lot of stanch right- wing positions that bordered on the absurd).
You guys didn't have a problem with a black captain on ST:DS9, and you didn't have a problem with a woman captain on ST:VOY. You didn't have a problem with Lt. Uhura and Lt. Sulu on the original series, nor did you have a problem with a lesbian couple on DS9 or a transgender person on TNG. I can remember the time when George Takei came out of the closet and there was not even a peep from any of the fans. They didn't care one way or another, they just loved their George. Now, with all of this to consider, why all of the contempt now?! Why all of the hatred for the actors and characters because they're gay, or black, or Asian, or women?! One disingenuous commenter tried to claim that it was ST:DISCO that they had a problem with, and that intolerance had nothing to do with it and used the fans love of Captain Janeway as an example. Well, I call bullshit on this as I have read nothing but vicious comments leveled at the characters and actors of this show-with one YouTuber and avowed ST:DISCO hater referring to actress Sonequa Martin-Green as a bitch!
What exactly is happening here? I suspect that it's the sign of the times, these times where the world is in the mist of great change-the growing acceptance of transgender people, the rise of women in professional life, and the acceptance of many different cultures, races and even fat acceptance. Color me naive, but I strongly believe that if ST:DISCO had come out in the 1990s and ST:VOY and ST:DS9 came out in 2017 then ST:DISCO would be a beloved series and the other two shows would be getting the hate. I can't be sure, of course, but I think that's a strong possibility.
One thing that I can can be sure of is that I will continue to support this latest installment of the Star Trek franchise.
Another thing that I am certain of is that I am so goddamn sick and tired of these entitled whiney punks saying things like 'critics love ST:DISCO but the fans hate it'!
Hey, asshole! You don't speak for me, and you don't speak for other Star Trek fans! You only speak for yourself and for those who share your sentiments!
Period.
As for the critics, I ditto them! You can't be a lousy show and get a nomination for a Peabody award, that's for fucking sure!
I hope that ST:DISCO gets a third season and many, many more! And I hope that this Star Trek sets the stage for all other Star Treks to come, and that the old Star Trek shows can still be loved without them continuing to be the only standard to follow.
Here's a toast to many, many more seasons to come!
Cheers! :D
