What about social media? The news media isn’t censoring Lemmy, why aren’t protestors at least sharing photos and videos here to get the word out?

Tom Hanks at his finest.

I have to agree, his delivery really doesn’t work for me. It feels like he’s elbowing me in the ribs with every gag.

That said, it’s not enough to spoil Airplane for me. Airplane is a masterpiece.

If they don’t like it, they need to find a way to hold their president accountable. Trump can end this conflict with a word. Until then, we do what we have to.

Always striking to me how many Star Trek fans are so dismissive of Star Trek. I know its of it’s time, but TOS didn’t take its place in history by accident. Wonderful storytelling, iconic characters - absolutely a must to watch, at least to try it out.

Voyager, by comparison, is pretty mid. The writing is super inconsistent and it absolutely squanders its own premise. Notable for Janeway, Seven, and the Doctor, but it’s definitely rough going.

But it’s still a good watch. The only ones I don’t think I could enthusiastically recommend are TAS, Enterprise, and Picard.

I’m not seeing it either. I even looked up a comparison. The green looks a touch more muted, and there’s a little more detail as one would expect, but otherwise it looks like the same old Shrek to me.

I’m mostly thinking of the dance number and the way the theatrical version cuts the final act split between Erin and Abby, which guts their respective arcs. I’ve only seen the theatrical once, so I couldn’t name what jokes it omitted. But there’s a good chance I’d agree with you, since there are a number of gags I wouldn’t miss. Mostly the “Kevin’s so dumb” bits, which don’t work for me.

I’m with you on Ghostbusters 2016. If you’re not expecting an all-time great like the original was, it’s a good time. A decent comedy movie with a good heart. It helps if you’re watching the extended cut, though.

Transformers One was worlds better than its advertising campaign would have you believe.

I’m old enough to remember the premiere of DS9, but I did appreciate Discovery’s move to the future. I liked the political aspects of the rebuilding of the Federation. I have always been a little bugged by how Earth centric Trek tends to be, so I especially appreciated the fact that Earth had seceded by the start of season 3. Not sure how much I can expect Academy to pick up on any of that, though.

Yeah, I hate to say it, but it makes sense from a bean-counter’s perspective. Lower Decks seemed to mostly target hardcore fans, and hardcore fans will already be subscribing to watch SNW. If its not gaining them any extra subscriptions, they don’t care about it.

Section 31 and Academy are both trying to court people outside of the existing fandoms. Certainly not very successfully in the case of Section 31, but the reasoning at play is pretty clear.

The Daddykins to someone’s Ronny as it were.

Nice patch, nice pennant. I hope they’re planning some solid merch for this. Even if the show turns out to be a disappointment, I’d be happy to buy some Starfleet Academy gear.

Season 4 has been confirmed as well. It’s true that there was a longer gap between seasons 2 and 3, but that’s when the Hollywood strikes fell, so it’s not surprising.

TNG did try to address social justice issues, but agreed it did so in a way that was extremely of its time. The Outcast is a great go-to example of that. It’s basically an anti-conversion therapy parable, so definitely progressive for its time, but in the process it portrays non-binary gender expression as literally alien to the Enterprise crew.

Agreed - there are different flavours of optimism. TNG presented a promise that one day, humanity will overcome the petty squabbles and bad ideologies it’s mired in today. There’s a place for that, but I think there’s more appetite today for a focus on how we’ll achieve that future - that we can and will fight for it.

Honestly, if I were pitching a concept to attract some fresh attention, I’d go with a “Star Trek: WW3” series. Set it around 2240 to 2250, feature Khan as a big bad, maybe sprinkle in some E.T. interference a la “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” to keep that essential sci-fi flavour. You could also mine the Reeves-Stevens novel “Federation” for some inspiration. The point would be to make it feel contemporary and topical, but ultimately show that when that tipping point into Star Trek’s future arrives, we’ll be able to tip in the right direction.

I think there’s definitely room for different tones and ideas, as long as we also have SNW to keep that classic Trek approach alive.

IDCLIP

You forget the option of puppetry! The best aliens have always been puppets.

Honestly, I think this has more consistently been Star Trek’s approach. Early TNG was the exception. It really pushed for an “evolved humanity” model for Star Trek, where something has fundamentally shifted in our collected psychology. Examples like Dr. Crusher speaking like its remarkable that people used to fear death, or Picard dismissing religion as childish superstition come to mind as particularly strong hints that we’ve changed a lot.

But later Trek pushes against this: DS9 with it’s murky way arc, Voyager with episodes like Equinox and Scorpion, and even late TNG with Pegasus and Journey’s End. They are all more likely to see the “evolved human” as something to be tested by the story, with the drama coming from the possibility that it might fail that test.

And I think this is for the best. If humanity is too evolved and too perfect, the series can feel a bit heavy on U.S. exceptionalism - with the very American coded Starfleet going around to other worlds to fix and moralize about other peoples’ problems, but never needing to self-reflect or improve on themselves. I think a healthy balance is needed to actually model the qualities that allowed humanity to improve in the first place (and that we really need to see more of in the world now).

Lawful evil. If I’m just reading through a book and can’t remember where I left off, it’s probably not a book worth coming back to. Bookmarks are exclusively for passages I want to come back to after I’ve finished the book - in those cases it’s usually just a scrap of paper.