Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

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BridgeConsoleMasher
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by BridgeConsoleMasher »

Admiral X wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2019 9:35 am Is merchandise selling all that well for anything these days?
Unless Ipads took over or something, I would say so. My nephews' house is saturated with physical toys and they open their christmas presents like crack.
Madner Kami wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2019 9:19 am
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2019 9:04 am Yeah the latter... That's where the market for Star Wars dolls is?
Don't be silly. Nobody buys New Star Wars merchandise, so... no.
Yeah I was like 11 years old or younger when I saw several of my friends collecting Star Wars action figures. I remember getting a Crusher action figure along with one or two other characters when it was on this special behind the counter sale at JCPenney, but I'm willing to bet that Star Wars merchandise obliterated Star Trek numbers. The whole idea of adults now in days collecting only new prime universe Trek figurines as opposed to Kelvin as far as marketing concerns seems laughable.
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Madner Kami
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by Madner Kami »

clearspira wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2019 11:11 amAnd in addition, they just sat back and watched a previously united fandom tear itself apart all for their own ends. Its classic Machiavellian strats.
Yeah, that's the next thing that just adds to the outright hatred I increasingly begin to feel to the Prime-Trek. How could they ever think, that this is going to get them sales? It doesn't make it any more likely that new fans come in, unless you want to pander to Star-Trek-trolls, which I have my doubts are going to actually spend money on this. And not only does this not create new fans, it also makes it more likely, that a considerable part of the fandom won't follow you and jump ship. How can you not see this coming and why would you ever want to do that, unless your very mindset is so focused on those strategies because they somehow work to your advantage in your private-life (instead of ending with being put into a mental asylum for your extreme sociopathic tendencies), that you can't help yourself, but apply those strategies to everything you are working with?
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Admiral X
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by Admiral X »

I don't understand the mentality they seem to have. It's like they think the brand name is all they need to get new fans, and they seem to think the new fans will be able to entirely replace the old ones.
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Worffan101
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by Worffan101 »

Fundamentally, canon is whatever CBS says it is. Sadly, that means ENT is canon. Midnight's edge is also a major-league rumor-monger whose sourcing is at best questionable.

Now, CONTINUITY is a whole 'nother thing, and it's entirely fair to say "XYZ episodes are really fucking stupid and don't deserve to be in continuity with the rest of the franchise, plus we have to take TOS as Broad Strokes".

As for the merch argument--ask yourselves, why do Black Panther toys sell like hot cakes while JJVerse toys and sequel-series Star Wars toys underperform? Well, which movie was insanely popular across the country, stayed in theaters for literally months (it was still running in Media, PA, when Infinity War came out), had a dozen characters that everybody loved, and didn't actively piss off its entire audience by being a shitty ham-fisted attempt to criticize its own subject matter while simultaneously trying to play it straight?

Black Panther.

Sequel-series Star Wars hasn't given us any cool new spaceship or other vehicle designs. Its AT-ATs are uglier derivatives of the original, as are its X-Wings, its Death Star III, and its Sith wannabe. The protagonists aren't written to be admirable heroes but incompetent fuckups. The movies so far have been a white-hot flaming dumpster fire with only a little original content, and a flaming dumpster fire with a few good ideas underneath; the two side story movies have been unexceptional box-office performers (albeit much better movies than the main installments) but largely rooted in throwback visual designs.

JJ gave us: A mediocre action movie with a Trek skin, a really shitty ripoff of Wrath of Khan, and then Simon Pegg took the franchise away from him and made a good Trek movie that nobody saw because they hated the ad campaign.

Is it really a shock that the toys don't sell well when the movies aren't very good?
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Makeshift Python
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

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How was ROGUE ONE unexceptional at the box office? It made a billion dollars, which is what only few films make and big studios try pushing franchises to make these days. It's what Paramount tried to push the Trek films into becoming. Though clearly SOLO did not fare well.

I don't think BEYOND unperformed just because of the ad campaign but also because of how INTO DARKNESS killed that momentum. The first film was a pretty decent hit that revived the brand, but Paramount made a pretty bad decision by not striking while the iron was hot and opting to wait for JJ to finish his pet project, which resulted in a four year wait. Marvel wouldn't have waited four years to make a sequel to a hit film of theirs, they would have immediately looked for another director to take over. Had they been on their game, a second film would have hit 2011, thus a third would have come out in 2013, not 2016 which was seven years after the first.
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by Sir Will »

Yeah it's certainly a convoluted mess. All we can do is hope CBS and Viacom join again and someday this is ironed out.

Not that this show would suddenly get a lot better if they didn't have the 25% thing to deal with. The main character of their show is still bad.
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Karha of Honor
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by Karha of Honor »

Sir Will wrote: Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:16 am Yeah it's certainly a convoluted mess. All we can do is hope CBS and Viacom join again and someday this is ironed out.

Not that this show would suddenly get a lot better if they didn't have the 25% thing to deal with. The main character of their show is still bad.
25%? What?
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MixedDrops
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by MixedDrops »

Really, the biggest point I'd have to make about Midnight's Edge has already been made:
Worffan101 wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:11 pm Midnight's edge is also a major-league rumor-monger whose sourcing is at best questionable.
My problem with people like Midnight's Edge, ultimately, isn't whether they're right or wrong about something- he could very well be right about everything, and he does have a good amount of facts (or at least, decently substantiated rumors) weaved into his videos. My problem has always been that he always takes those facts and tries to present them in the most negative way possible (while also weaving in guesswork which doesn't help his credibility when it's clear he hates Discovery), so basically any discussion held under his assumptions have a poisoned well. Like they say, the best lies are partially true.

And I don't get this general theme of "New Trek creators hate the fans". If you want to say the suits have disdain or at least cold indifference for the fans, I don't see how that's not just business as usual. If you think the actual people who have worked on the show are so, it means you include people like Joe Menosky, Jonathan Frakes and Kirsten Beyer in that. Probably includes Nicholas Meyer too, whatever his contribution was. It just comes off as a "if you like Discovery, you're not a REAL Trek fan" kind of gatekeeping ridiculousness. FTR I say this as someone who thinks Kurtzman is a terrible writer, but I have little reason to think he hates Trek or even "doesn't understand" it.

Even considering some of the non-Trek writers, you could go either way. Akiva Goldsman for instance has a really uneven history, so if I wanted to spin Akiva Goldsman as poorly as possible I could constantly cite the fact that he wrote those two shitty Schumacher Batman movies, or I could try to make him look good by citing the fact he wrote the screenplay for A Beautiful Mind.
Makeshift Python wrote: Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:37 am I don't think BEYOND unperformed just because of the ad campaign but also because of how INTO DARKNESS killed that momentum. The first film was a pretty decent hit that revived the brand, but Paramount made a pretty bad decision by not striking while the iron was hot and opting to wait for JJ to finish his pet project, which resulted in a four year wait. Marvel wouldn't have waited four years to make a sequel to a hit film of theirs, they would have immediately looked for another director to take over. Had they been on their game, a second film would have hit 2011, thus a third would have come out in 2013, not 2016 which was seven years after the first.
While I'm sure faster releases would've helped, consider that Into Darkness actually made more money than Trek 09. Arguably by a significant margin too. And while people around here love to crap on Into Darkness, both audiences and critics of the time seemed to like it just fine.

For comparison also consider, say, The Dark Knight trilogy- the space between those films isn't that much larger than the ones between the Trek Kelvin Trilogy and those movies didn't really have any problem staying afloat. Though perhaps that might be a unfair comparison, so maybe also consider something like the Jason Bourne movies- anywhere from two to nearly five years between movies, and they were also decently consistent. With movies I don't think people mind waiting a couple years between them.
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clearspira
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by clearspira »

Slash Gallagher wrote: Sat Feb 09, 2019 11:24 am
Sir Will wrote: Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:16 am Yeah it's certainly a convoluted mess. All we can do is hope CBS and Viacom join again and someday this is ironed out.

Not that this show would suddenly get a lot better if they didn't have the 25% thing to deal with. The main character of their show is still bad.
25%? What?
You need to watch the video to understand the 25% rights issue. Basically, the current deal with CBS means that everything Trek related they do HAS to be at least 25% different to what came before. The 1701, the TOS inspired uniforms, even STD Spock is designed to be at minumum 25% different to Nimoy. This is why STD and Abrams looks so different to what came before - its actually got very little to do with changing special effects.
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Re: Midnight's Edge and STD's Canon Status

Post by technobabbler »

CBS/Viacom (and/or Kurtzman) were dumb by not being honest with the fans. Just say STD + the films are in the same universe, but not in the TOS-ENT universe.

People (except the die-hards) would have given STDisco an open mind with the new visuals instead of being confused and annoyed by the Chinese water torture of canon inconsistencies in every episode.

STDisco would still be dying with the shoddy characters and writing.
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