Meh

Cerebral is definitely not the way I would characterize Weir’s writing.

Middle school or YA science fiction is more like it. I first encountered his work when it was recommended for one of our kids.

It’s popular science level stuff. Fun, popcorn stuff.

I do like and read cerebral science fiction.

As an example for contrast, I would suggest the Machineries of Empire trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee, starting with Ninefox Gambit. It’s more on the speculative mathematicians side but it made me think more about topology and probabilistic spaces than I have had to since grad school. All the intellectual fun without the grind.

We seem to share a reaction.

To be fair, I already had sense of Weir as an author was that he was limited in range, and would basically pitch the same kind of lone, MacGyvering hero, to anyone who would buy it — whether or not it was a fit for their show or strategic plan.

It’s the punching down to promote himself, while he’s riding a high, that’s earned my disrespect.

Weir’s reportedly doubled down in other interviews since, saying things along the lines that Star Trek has influenced all of modern science fiction except the more recent era of shows. I’m not going looking for that interview, but it seems that this isn’t a one-off comment on his part.

Regarding Rick Berman or other showrunners of a large collaboration, my reaction is more complex, because there were so many others involved in the creation.

While a cinematic feature is a huge collaborative undertaking, Weir sells himself as a kind of lone-wolf type author and so invites reactions on that basis.

There’s also the fact that Berman’s abusive behaviour was kept largely secret while the shows were running. So, my love of the specific shows and episodes was already set before I had the full context.

I’d known from friends in the fandom, with close connections to production, that the early TNG years were generally miserable for all involved but hadn’t heard as much by season four. Berman made the other showrunners be the media frontman, spokespersons for production during most of the 1990s. He wasn’t an eminence gris in reality, but might have well have been for the amount of information available for viewers to know what was actually going on.

Watching now, knowing how the actors and crew were treated, hearing their sides to the story, definitely does impact my experience on rewatching, and I am not as likely to rewatch as frequently as I was.

As another comparison, to someone who made himself out as more of an auteur creator, I find that I really can’t rewatch Josh Whedon productions at this point, especially Buffy.

I would argue that very little good science fiction tries to have nothing to say about humanity or the human condition.

There is some very intellectual and intelligent science fiction that takes on and speculates about advanced science and mathematics concepts but these are rarely mainstream and not at all the kind of thing Weir writes.

Some science fiction can be just fun science, engineering or math speculation stories told in prose, but if doesn’t have something to say about ourselves, it’s value isn’t much more than diversion — although diversion and entertainment are valuable in themselves.

Setting aside for now Weir’s rather sour grapes criticism of Star Trek, and stipulating the fact that Star Trek has, from its earliest episodes, had a recurrent pattern of including very transparent and heavy handed allegories to current social and political situations and controversies, let’s consider the general question of what is science fiction for.

Science fiction can be and has been a means of allegorical storytelling, and of pondering the human condition at the individual and the societal level. It tells us about ourselves as much as it tells us about a broader universe.

Huxley and Orwell did this with their dystopias. However, so did hard science fiction greats like Arthur C. Clark. Childhood’s End, Rendezvous with Rama, and 2001: a Space Odyssey were as much about who we are now as what might be out there.

More literary science fiction authors explored themes in psychology and human consciousness from the mid twentieth century on, and high quality science fiction took up those questions in films like The Forbidden Planet.

I didn’t find this kind of reaching about the human condition in either of Weir’s books. I did find them fun rides, the kind of pop fiction that used to be described as “airport” novels — the kind of book people pick up in airport kiosks before a long flight, that are often make into “popcorn movies.”

The science elements in his books are ok, but not astonishing. The level is really middle school, which is why The Martian was reissued in a ‘school edition’ cleaned of the swear words. My own first contact with Weir was our youngest’s ‘school edition’. It wasn’t an overly challenging book for a bright grade 6 student.

What I found in Weir’s writing was a repeating pattern of a lone-wolf individual male hero making some incredibly daft decisions after a catastrophic event that set up his opportunity to MacGyver himself out of the situation. It’s a trope.

It’s not definitive of the genre and it’s not conducive to the ensemble problem solving needed for more complex STEM work in science fiction. And unfortunately Weir’s short fiction has shown that he hasn’t yet mastered the skill of telling stories on a broader canvas.

Fun ride episodes, shows and movies belong in Star Trek and other science fiction too. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be there. One of the franchise’s strengths has been that it can incorporate the full range of styles. But it’s never been only fun rides and individual heroism or individual MacGyvering. I think we’d see as much scathing criticism if shows tried to be just that.

But back to Weir’s attitude and tone, speaking in his moment of success.

He could have let his work speak for itself, and focused on promoting his film.

Instead he chose to prop up himself by putting down others. I don’t respect that. I don’t see that as having integrity. I see that as being a jerk, and it validates the sense that I got from his books that he doesn’t know himself how to work well with others so he doesn’t write what he doesn’t know.

He didn’t have to shoot his mouth off when baited. Instead, he chose to weigh disingenuously into the ‘culture wars’ by claiming to be above having a message.

He could have chosen at some future moment to drop a mention that he, like many writers had pitched spec scripts to the Star Trek franchise that weren’t taken up for movies or television, that weren’t seen as a fit in the strategic plan of the franchise at the time. That would have likely garnered a lot of positive interest from across the Trek fandom.

Instead, he chose to use his moment to trash the creations of others and, implicitly, the part of the fandom that those shows were written for.

He won’t be getting my money.

This is the second quote of its kind in a day. The earlier one was about ‘woke’ messaging and how he writes to have no symbolism or underlying meaning in his work.

Going on a media tour is something that people are trained for.

They have their messages. They are ready for the provocations and the traps. And this isn’t Weir’s first Hollywood movie that’s done well.

This specific call out against Star Trek is something that he could have easily stepped about. He didn’t need to go out of his way to alienate a significant potential portion of his audience.

I’m not sure ‘lined up’ is quite right.

It’s more that Tom Jackson was considered the likely choice and was known to be under final consideration, but there were always others being tested for the role.

But it would have been a huge conflict, even in the 90s.

Jackson would have been leaving a groundbreaking Indigenous-focused show that laid the ground for authentic representation and storytelling to join the cast of Voyager. There is no likelihood he would have avoided questioning the consultant’s credibility.

I’m wondering if Jackson raised some soft concerns in the auditions such that Paramount decided they didn’t want to risk frictions, not realizing that their contract advisor was the issue.

I’m on a Voyager rewatch with one of our GenZ kids.

It wasn’t long before we hit the episode with Chakotay coaching Janeway to find her spirit animal guide — I had to stop to explain why I was finding it uncomfortable.

They’ve seen the whole series multiple times since middle school but hadn’t known about the entire fake ‘Indigenous consultant’ fiasco with Voyager.

Conceptually, I appreciate the intention to have an authentic but non specific Indigenous character and hiring a consultant for that. That’s definitely intentional representation.

I often wonder if the consultant pushed the EPs away from casting Canadian actor Tom Jackson in the role of Chakotay simply because Jackson, who is authentically Indigenous (Cree mother, raised on-reserve in Saskatchewan) would have likely outed the consultant as a fraud very quickly.

Tom Jackson had played the role of Lakanta in the TNG 7th season Wesley-focused episode ‘Journey’s End.’ He was at the time, already in a senior main cast role in the groundbreaking CBC show North of 60 and had demonstrated his ability work in an ensemble with strong women characters.

By all accounts, Jackson was in very serious consideration for the role of Chakotay. Beltran was a surprising choice by contrast. While Latin American Indigenous descent is part of his heritage, there were sincere questions raised about why the showrunners had chosen not to cast an actor who was raised and connected to his Inidgenous identity.

The franchise wouldn’t exist if my 90 something year old mother-in-law and women like her didn’t watch it all and buy the books and magazines since 1966.

Or, if I and my partner and others hadn’t been watching since TOS was in first run.

Having defended TNG against TOS fans who wanted it killed, and having seen TAS killed by fan campaigns in the mid 1970s, I have no time for people in their 40s and 50s who would rather kill a show than have new Trek that might be meaningful to my GenZ kids.

No one was “shoving anything down your throat.”

You don’t need to watch.

You may have been the key 15-34 year old demographic that advertisers and marketers target back in the 1990s. If so, you are not the key demographic now. Why do you think others should be paying for your preferences?

Good thing people stuck with TNG season one despite rehashes like ‘The Naked Now’, offensive episodes like ‘Code of Honor’ and most of a season of sub par offerings.

It’s possible on a regular basis.

However, as with other high profile accounts, one expects that messages that are high profile would be cleared with the person under whose name the official account is made.

There was a report posted elsewhere claiming that the viewership has been greater than expected but they still canceled it.

It’s a silver lining to see Shatner using his platform for the greater good.

Definitely a YMMV situation. I have seen all three Kelvin movies and liked the first best of the lot

Beyond didn’t redeem itself for me. The motorcycle ridiculousness put it in the Nemesis category for me. There’s also the fact that none of the rest of the family would watch with me after the first one.

That said, the movies are being led by completely different people at this point.

Kurtzman is only negotiating television production not movies. My point was that the movie people have yet to prove themselves in even being able to deliver a cinematic feature in the franchise. So, would be an extreme risk to lock a 5-7 year deal that includes television production.

It depends on whether the intent is to integrate the movies and television.

No one involved with the new movies has proven their ability to deliver on Star Trek, whatever their other credentials.

It would be a major risk to give any untested production company and EP the kind of multiyear contract needed to run the franchise.

I’m always concerned that having an unresolved cliffhanger has the opposite impact.

It discourages new viewers from trying a show and undermines the case for a movie.

A Firefly to Serendipity outcome is vanishingly rare.

And unlike Farscape, the production company partner can’t get the IP back and make a limited series or streaming movie to resolve it.

That’s not in the announcements

Variety confirmed that CBS Studios and Kurtzman are continuing to be in negotiations for a renewed partnership.

They put the show on a small niche streamer that doesn’t have an audience in the demographic that the show was made for.

The show did much better on Amazon channels than on Paramount+ — ranking 1 or 2 across its run. That tells you that the problem is that Paramount+ has narrowed its audience to Sheridanverse fans, not that the show isn’t good.

Every show Paramount+ has tried to attract the younger GenZ audience with has failed. And the streamer is failing — which is why Paramount has been bought and the streamer will be merged with HBO Max.

While that may be your view, I hope you’re not going to work against the show or shows like it either.

Because very many people who between 40 and 55 did brigade against this show, gave it very negative reviews, and discouraged others from watching it without watching a full episode themselves. To the point that Psychology Today wrote a feature article The Trouble With Review Bombing.

Anyone over 35 is not in the key demographic. I dare say that’s most 90s Star Trek fans and most of us on this board.

But if we go out of our way to say that if it’s not made for us we’ll attack it relentlessly so that younger, target viewers won’t even try it, then it’s not going to serve anyone.

And yes, I have seen the entire season of SFA. I watched it with my partner and one of our GenZ kids. And I have signed the petition.