I think you’ve hit it right on the head!
I’ve been thinking that this is going to be precisely as divisive among fans as the syrupy, and very American-centric, cover of Faith of the Heart for Enterprise.
Fortunately, for those who weren’t enjoying that music choice, it won’t be the title music every episode.
The title music is boring but innocuous for our household at least.
I understand that many people are quite enthusiastic about the music for this show, and are quite moved by this rendition of this song.
I am truly bored by it. My parter and our oldest GenZ both replied, “What music?”when I asked them what I thought at the end of episode 2.
Is there some deep American Millennial music preference that this is tapping into that none of our household quite understands?
I’m hoping that we’ll get another perspective through Tarina’s brother Ocam Sadal.
I noticed that he gave her information on what Caleb was thinking beyond what she was able to pick up on her own with the inhibitor on.
He’s very up front and Luaxana-like. I like him a lot already.
I think he’s going to be a great addition as a roommate to Caleb and Darem.
Generally, Paramount owns all Star Trek IP rights.
However, reusing some things isn’t cost less. In some cases, they have to pay residuals to specific individuals or subcontractors who have creative rights.
Historically, this has led to weirdness such as renaming the Locarno character from the TNG episode ’Lower Decks’, played by Robert Duncan McNeill, to become Tom Paris in Voyager because Paramount didn’t want to pay the writer who got scrip credit for the TNG episode ongoing residuals for creating the character.
I don’t know enough about whether creators of animated character designs have rights to similar kinds of residuals, or the production houses like Titmouse for Lower Decks, but one has to wonder. It was so strange that Paramount+ suddenly said it was refocusing away from animation just as Skydance started its moves to acquire it.
As an animated Trek fan, that definitely irks, especially as it’s an animated sequence.
I have a suspicion that there’s something about animated design IP rights behind the decision though.
The old owners had decided to jettison animated Star Trek, and some other Paramount+ animated content to make the streamer mainly live action focused. Which, at the time this was announced, seemed very odd because Paramount’s owners were trying to sell the firm to Skydance, which is a major producer of high end animation for streamers.
So, my thought is that Skydance wants its own animation studio to be doing any future animated content for Paramount. There will be exceptions for long running Nickelodeon animation such as SpongeBob, Beavis and Butthead or Dora the Explorer, but relatively recent creations will get short shrift.
Yes, definitely recommend watching season one now.
Should also note that Dominique Tipper, who played Naomi Nagata in the Expanse, has a significant recurring role in the show.
Pride, Prejudice and Zombies remains a favourite of mine. The movie is still streaming on Amazon Prime.
I really liked Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for its effort to go further with the characters and the world building.
The creators understood the mission was to do Monsterverse stories that cannot be told in the runtimes of big cinematic experiences and make it an accessible introduction for new audiences.
The character storylines are driving the narrative, and the first season does a great job, for the uninitiated, of unveiling the classic elements of the Monsterverse personas, tropes and history. King Kong, Godzilla and King Kong and the other Japanese classics really rely on emotion as much as overwhelmingly huge beasts, so it makes a good deal of sense to build the franchise out through streaming.
I hadn’t seen Wyatt Russell before but was positively impressed. His is a much more likeable role in this show, and an interesting one as his father Kurt Russell plays the same character in the current era. Anna Sakai is very strong also.
I can see why those who are just fans of big monsters battling may be disappointed. The visual effects are cinematic quality as you’d expect of Apple, but they naturally do not get the proportion of screen time that they would in a cinematic feature.
A valid criticism is that the first season took a bit to find its groove or voice. There is perhaps more youthful angst and resentment than older fans will welcome in the first episodes of season one, and it takes time for the storylines in two time periods to come together. As well, it’s clear that some of the directors had different ideas and style.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters does have smaller monsters, not all of which are juveniles.
It really does succeed in building out the lore in that way.
But they’re not at all the kind of typical European fantasy monsters you’re thinking of.
It was mentioned in another interview that Tawny Newsome has the script credit for episode 5 and confirmed that it is SAM-focused.
Given the complete failure to produce and release anything for Star Trek in more than a decade on the cinematic side, I can’t think any reasonable senior executive would think now is the time to let Kurtzman go. All the more, the historic chaos in relaunching the television franchise in the early seasons of both TNG and Discovery have demonstrated that it’s just not possible to launch a new overall franchise runner without running major risks.
Kurtzman’s got a reputation as being good to work with from both the studio/streamer and creative side. They don’t have any evidence to show he won’t adjust to new strategic direction.
The question more will be how far will Kurtzman himself be willing to compromise if the Ellisons give high level direction that would take the franchise in a very different direction for television.
What I do see is that some of the perceived failures will definitely lead to restricted opportunities for some of the EPs that have worked for Kurtzman. For example, Osunsami may not be given run of a project again after the S31 movie. Michelle Paradise won’t likely be asked to run another show in the franchise.
Although Paramount+ now streams all the live action Star Trek shows in Canada, BellMedia’s CTV Sci-fi Channel has continued to provide linear cable programming for many of the Star Trek shows, including Strange New Worlds.
It wasn’t clear whether Starfleet Academy would also be available on CTV in first run. It’s now appearing in the television listings with a double episode premiere starting at 9:00 pm Eastern Time.
Treklit has some great offerings. The Relaunch universe books in particular developed coherent serialized storylines and a group of strong authors. There is also a deep library of standalone books from across all eras of the franchise.
By contrast, serialized Star Trek is struggling onscreen. Of the current era, only Prodigy has excelled in serialized storytelling.
So, why not look to the books? Not just to lift an idea like Control or the end of the Borg, but to actually tell a coherent narrative across a season or season?
On Netflix, Prime and Apple, it’s become established that successful streaming shows are often based on novels and novel series. Those streamers have come to understand that novelists, not scriptwriters, excel in laying out long form storytelling, and resources are often better put in having the screenwriters adapt than create from the whole cloth.
Reading a recent interview with Mick Herron, author of the critically acclaimed and popular Slow Horses on Apple, with a second show based on his other books launching this fall, I was struck by the interviewer’s assertion of this truism.
I thought about several of the non franchise shows I enjoy and how many of them are more or less faithful adaptations of books.
I was also struck by the thought that both Skydance and Paramount are quite capable of producing excellent book adaptations for Netflix and Apple. Murderbot is a very current example.
So, what’s holding back Star Trek from exploiting the Vanguard series or the Starfleet Core of Engineers books?
Why insist on giving showrunners resources to keep retelling franchise stories with legacy characters and tropes?
Why not exploit that IP that Paramount already owns by adapting the best of decades of TrekLit?
We picked up some good deals from the promotion this week.
Several Star Trek licensed games are on Steam, now at a significantly discounted price for the annual Star Trek Day celebration.
These include the MMP Star Trek Online, but also single player games Star Trek Bridge Crew and Star Trek Resurgence (a choose your own path role play game).
We’d waited until Resurgence came to Steam, because we did want to buy it from Epic, but decided to be even more patient and wait for a sale so we could get it for our teens as well. I’ve been playing in parallel with one of our teens and debating the impacts of our very different choices.
I have had Bridge Crew since 2022, but we got copies for the teens yesterday. One is into it. It requires running an Ubisoft account synched to Steam which can be annoying, but otherwise G2G.
Having reached my exasperation on the total lack of information from Bell Media on a Canadian release, I asked @GoodAaron@mastodon.social if he or the Hagemans could share any information. Here is his reply on Mastodon.
It’s great to have EPs who will engage with us.
I’m still gearing up my recipes for a Star Trek Prodigy Soirée for the premiere!
In case you haven’t seen this, CBS entertainment sponsored a social media influencer to develop watch party ideas for the Prodigy Season 1 finale Supernova Soirée .
I’ve been experimenting and building on some of these ideas for the premiere of season two. One of Canada’s favourite ice cream brands has this interesting suggestion for A triple-berry yogurt sorbet float punch that seems very Star Trek Prodigy themed.
Are your siblings younger Millennials or GenZs.
They definitely have different ideas about music and sound tracks.
One of our GenZ kids likes a wide range of music, but most of it is from the 1960s to 1980s. But there’s a lot of KPop blasting in house too.