Star Trek (DIS): Despite Yourself

[bronnt]

By the way: TLJ was a fantastic film, and Luke was completely in-character, up to and including the Rashomon telling of his confrontation with Ben Solo. Having beaten the Dark Side once doesn't mean he's never going to be tempted again.

It's so tempting to lay out the many reasons I disagree, but it's getting off-topic. If you wish to make an argument about the merits of The Last Jedi, visit other threads.

[clearspira]

By the way: TLJ was a fantastic film, and Luke was completely in-character, up to and including the Rashomon telling of his confrontation with Ben Solo. Having beaten the Dark Side once doesn't mean he's never going to be tempted again.

It's so tempting to lay out the many reasons I disagree, but it's getting off-topic. If you wish to make an argument about the merits of The Last Jedi, visit other threads.

Agreed, I am not going to continue this either, only to say that someone really needs to look up the difference between commercial and critical acclaim and why short term mega profits are not a substitute for the latter. I would recommend Chuck's series on the comic book speculator boom for a taster of this.

[Karha of Honor]

By the way: TLJ was a fantastic film, and Luke was completely in-character, up to and including the Rashomon telling of his confrontation with Ben Solo. Having beaten the Dark Side once doesn't mean he's never going to be tempted again.

It's so tempting to lay out the many reasons I disagree, but it's getting off-topic. If you wish to make an argument about the merits of The Last Jedi, visit other threads.

Agreed, I am not going to continue this either, only to say that someone really needs to look up the difference between commercial and critical acclaim and why short term mega profits are not a substitute for the latter. I would recommend Chuck's series on the comic book speculator boom for a taster of this.

Let's call it wonk aclcaim. Critics mean less and less.

[BunBun299]

So, I've been rewatching the reviews of this series. Something I remember reading, both here and other places, was people being upset by the death of Doctor Culber. And something bugs me about this. I don't watch the show, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing somethings that just don't make it into 15 minute summaries. So, to anyone who watches this show, can you please tell me something about Doctor Culber? Other than he was a doctor and he was gay?

[Deledrius]

So, I've been rewatching the reviews of this series. Something I remember reading, both here and other places, was people being upset by the death of Doctor Culber. And something bugs me about this. I don't watch the show, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing somethings that just don't make it into 15 minute summaries. So, to anyone who watches this show, can you please tell me something about Doctor Culber? Other than he was a doctor and he was gay?

There's a lot more to the issue as part of a larger pattern than just the character, who was very lightly-defined, in light of the significance of the couple's presence in the franchise:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_ster ... ur_gays%22
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... ryYourGays

[Worffan101]

So, I've been rewatching the reviews of this series. Something I remember reading, both here and other places, was people being upset by the death of Doctor Culber. And something bugs me about this. I don't watch the show, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing somethings that just don't make it into 15 minute summaries. So, to anyone who watches this show, can you please tell me something about Doctor Culber? Other than he was a doctor and he was gay?

It was already kind of annoying that his defining character trait was "gay" (keep in mind that the goddamn CW's been doing better since season 4 of "Arrow" introduced openly gay, black scientist Curtis Holt as a main character and then had his marriage being under strain from his vigilante actions be a major plot point) and the Stamets/Culber couple was very stereotypical and not in the best way, but killing off the openly gay character just isn't cool.

As in, that's what made me ragequit "The 100" after 2.5 seasons of shitty writing, and I was FAR from the only one.

[Worffan101]

So, I've been rewatching the reviews of this series. Something I remember reading, both here and other places, was people being upset by the death of Doctor Culber. And something bugs me about this. I don't watch the show, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing somethings that just don't make it into 15 minute summaries. So, to anyone who watches this show, can you please tell me something about Doctor Culber? Other than he was a doctor and he was gay?

Also, here's an analysis by an actual gay guy, explains it better than I can:
https://geekdad.com/2018/01/star-trek-d ... -10-recap/

[Deledrius]

The stupid thing (on top of all the other stupid things) is that it served no role in the plot or the characters. Tyler still left right after, and his trauma and betrayal would have had just as much weight without murder. If Culber didn't discover the details until just after they left, the Discovery crew would still know about Tyler and be unwilling to tell Burnham. Stamets never truly has a moment to reflect on the death which isn't overshadowed by immediate threats, so it doesn't even matter on-screen to the one person to whom it should have derailed everything.

They promise that "it's not what we think" and that it'll actually be some magical wonderful special transcendent romance, but if that's the case, it's not going to be until next season. And even if it is the case, it's still undermining a positive, working relationship by turning it into the same old tragic story. They've hinted that we're going to get a rehash of the swimmy metaphysical existence of the Prophets from DS9, which wasn't exactly the strongest element even in a show with a competent staff which wasn't being replaced wholesale every half-season.

I'm not gay, so I can't speak to that experience, but I feel like "he's really dead, but he'll continue being with Stamets in mycelial spirit" would be very disappointing to me if I were.

I'm really not sure what the real truth of the situation is, either. The show hyped the first canon gay couple long before the reveal, but the showrunners claim to have been surprised anyone cared, yet they also had already vetted this plotline with GLAAD (who apparently approved) and they had PR interviews ready to roll the night the episode aired as damage control. So, did they know, or didn't they? Was it unexpected, or did they realize it too late to undo it, but early enough to defuse the situation by pre-emptively claiming they "Have A Plan"? It's a mess, and I can't unravel it.

The only truth that seems obvious to me for certain is that Culber died because they decided that someone had to, because that's hugely en vogue for artificially raising stakes in television right now, and Culber was the most expendable character in their beat-by-beat plot-driven storyline. Everyone else had a mark they had to hit in the next few episodes, except the easily-stuffed-in-a-fridge love interest to the Engineer.

[Worffan101]

What Deledrius said^^^^

It's a combination of hack writing overall, a lazy and undisciplined writers' room, a persistent lack of imagination in Hollywood exacerbated by the show being overseen by Alex Kurtzman (who's one of if not THE the most washed-up incompetent hacks in the entire industry), and quite possibly apathy to boot.

The really hilarious part? The CW made the EXACT same mistake about a year before Fridgegate, by fucking up "The 100" and its fanbase by having the female protagonist's girlfriend get killed off in a very similar manner (hit by a bullet intended for the protagonist fired by a minor antagonist in a meaningless shock death) for the same reasons (meaningless shock death) and pissed off so many people that there was a freaking con named after the couple's fan nickname that was set up to discuss exactly this fridging problem in the aftermath.

(which is also why when the CW found themselves needing to quickly get rid of another gay character when her actress wanted out, they found a less offensive albeit still cringey solution by having the couple break up for stupid reasons. The CW has issues, but at leas they can learn, unlike Alex Kurtzman)

But Alex Kurtzman is a mouth-breathing incompetent who can't even blow his own nose without tripping and falling flat on his ass, much less write a serialized TV show, so the writers threw together the clunkiest stereotypical crap they could and called it a day instead of taking the time to learn from the mistake that had ALREADY BEEN MADE and its fairly well-publicized aftermath. I mean, these people are on social media. They should be somewhat aware of things going on in the film and television industry. They should be reading stuff like the Hollywood Reporter and getting aggregations of genre-related news from BuzzFeed from their secretaries so they can avoid looking too much like the competition. The whole Clexagate bullshit that "The 100" had to deal with? They should absolutely have been aware of that and written something different instead of preparing ass-covering interviews.

God I fucking hate this show and its "creators" and I want to see them all burn in hell.

Not the cast, though, the cast are doing good work with shit material, ain't their fault.

[Admiral X]

You know, I was mad when they killed Trip after breaking him and T'Pol up for no real reason, in "These are the Voyages...", but I don't think I ever wished for B&B to burn in hell. I just wished they'd pulled their heads out of each others' asses and let Manny Coto finish out the series.