New Series--The Orville

[Hermit]

I can only a$$ume that that they feel  there is $omething they may have overlooked in the$e and other intellectual propertie$.  $omething they hope will $erve their creative mu$e$ perhap$? But really, whatever it i$ that drive$ corporate attempt$ at creativity I can only gue$$.

 

[zslane]

Years before HBO picked up Game of Thrones, I had hopes that they would work out a deal with the Tolkien estate to do a series, maybe called something along the lines of "Tales from the Silmarillion", which would cover the epic stories from the First Age of Middle-Earth. That was merely a pipe dream back then. Now, if that's what Amazon wants to do then they have my full support. However, if they just want to continue to tread the tired old ground of the Third Age, then I'm not going to jump on that bandwagon.

[Starlord]

Hopefully they'll do Tolkien proud with episodes full of tediously descriptive walks through the forest and epic tales of watching leaves change color with incredibly brief interludes full of action and conversation. 

[Lawnmower Boy]

6 hours ago, Hermit said:

I can only a$$ume that that they feel  there is $omething they may have overlooked in the$e and other intellectual propertie$.  $omething they hope will $erve their creative mu$e$ perhap$? But really, whatever it i$ that drive$ corporate attempt$ at creativity I can only gue$$.

 

You've accidentally mapped the dollar sign to the "s" key again, Hermit. Just thought you should know. And remember, if you want it fixed, you should definitely send me all your money. 

[Ternaugh]

Now I have an urge to track down Vega$. 

[bigdamnhero]

On 11/15/2017 at 10:54 AM, zslane said:

One Star Trek trope I could never really buy into was the "all biped species in the universe are sexually compatible" trope. It's worse than the tacit assumption that invisible, perfect universal translators are operating at all times, no matter the situation, no matter the location of the action.

Well the latter is pretty-much a story-telling necessity; having to wait to have everything translated really destroys the narrative flow. So necessary evil IMO.

And the former they sorta-quasi justified by revealing that most intelligent life in the galaxy was all "seeded" from common genetic stock by the Progenitors or whatever they called them.

[bigdamnhero]

Double post, sorry.

[bigdamnhero]

Triple post? Damn.

[Tech priest support]

I should have known better (this is a little OT, sorry) but I had some hopes once that new film making technology would make but feasible for micro production films to be of adequate quality to generate enough revenue to finance themselves and another film. Thus good, original and non formulaic films could be made and distributed that wouild be successful witnfairly tiny returns. A new generation of "young turk" film makers with original visions could arise and displace the profit obsessed pablum factory Hollywood as become. 

 

Seeing what fan films were doing with star trek gave me hope. Then i saw paramount murder the fan film industry because not was making far better treknthan they could. I realized  ten that Hollywood would never really let micron productions compete with them. Whenever a micro production outfit challenged a big studio, the studio would not compete with it. It would simply swing a huge sack of money and crush the micro production legally.

 

After all, it's cheaper and easier to crush a small production outfit with legal might than it is to make better films.

[Starlord]

4 hours ago, bigdamnhero said:

Well the latter is pretty-much a story-telling necessity; having to wait to have everything translated really destroys the narrative flow. So necessary evil IMO.

And the former they sorta-quasi justified by revealing that most intelligent life in the galaxy was all "seeded" from common genetic stock by the Progenitors or whatever they called them.

 

That episode also served to explain the financial/story-telling necessity that all intelligent life looked the same except for their foreheads, I suppose. 

[Ternaugh]

6 hours ago, Tech priest support said:

I should have known better (this is a little OT, sorry) but I had some hopes once that new film making technology would make but feasible for micro production films to be of adequate quality to generate enough revenue to finance themselves and another film. Thus good, original and non formulaic films could be made and distributed that wouild be successful witnfairly tiny returns. A new generation of "young turk" film makers with original visions could arise and displace the profit obsessed pablum factory Hollywood as become. 

 

Seeing what fan films were doing with star trek gave me hope. Then i saw paramount murder the fan film industry because not was making far better treknthan they could. I realized  ten that Hollywood would never really let micron productions compete with them. Whenever a micro production outfit challenged a big studio, the studio would not compete with it. It would simply swing a huge sack of money and crush the micro production legally.

 

After all, it's cheaper and easier to crush a small production outfit with legal might than it is to make better films.

 

Small horror films are where the best ROI has been this year. Happy Death Day has made over $55 million domestic and $33 million foreign on an initial budget of $4.8 million.

[zslane]

I just think Hollywood is lazy and goes with invisible, perfect universal translators because it is easy and they don't really like a meaningful (writing/production) challenge. More fertile creative minds could come up with a way to deal with alien languages without slowing down the storytelling or blowing the fx budget. The Vorlons and Shadows of Babylon 5 are a reasonably good example.

 

Let's face it, Trek's "seeding the universe" trope is pure handwavium, designed explicitly to make you stop engaging your higher reasoning centers and just "go with it," no matter how absurd the storytelling becomes as a result of it. Not all of Trek's tropes are like that, and many are easier to accept than others. I'm merely pointing out that it is one of those that I conceptually choke on every time it is made central to a major plotline.

[Jagged]

Also Traveller did it first

[sinanju]

8 hours ago, zslane said:

I just think Hollywood is lazy and goes with invisible, perfect universal translators because it is easy and they don't really like a meaningful (writing/production) challenge. More fertile creative minds could come up with a way to deal with alien languages without slowing down the storytelling or blowing the fx budget. The Vorlons and Shadows of Babylon 5 are a reasonably good example.

 

Let's face it, Trek's "seeding the universe" trope is pure handwavium, designed explicitly to make you stop engaging your higher reasoning centers and just "go with it," no matter how absurd the storytelling becomes as a result of it. Not all of Trek's tropes are like that, and many are easier to accept than others. I'm merely pointing out that it is one of those that I conceptually choke on every time it is made central to a major plotline.

 

Heck, Stargate: SG-1 did it--and they even had a guy who spoke multiple languages on the team. Having to translate for the Abydosians in a single feature film is one thing. Having to have all the conversations bottlenecked thru a single character week after week after week, or having the team miraculously learn countless alien languages in the first 15 minutes of each episode...the conceit that everyone in the universe speaks English is the lesser of evils.

[Tech priest support]

Well sure, we could have made star trek a series wit very inhuman aliens and elaborate makeup that would have eaten the budget in lie 3 episodes an d we could make having to establish communication witnegery new alien a pivotal point of every EP and spent most of the EP learning to communicate. And the series would have laksted like 3 episodes so I guess it would have balanced out.

 

[Tech priest support]

BTW the Orville is not better than trek. It just happened to e luckier in tat it is made in a time when good effects are easy dye to CGI and experience and has a better budget than trek did because trek proved sf can be profitable. I can't comment on the show as I will never watch an episode since I hate Seth McFarlane.

 

[Pattern Ghost]

9 hours ago, Tech priest support said:

BTW the Orville is not better than trek.

 

9 hours ago, Tech priest support said:

I can't comment on the show

 

[Ternaugh]

5 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

 

 

"Well, I don't like them, they wet their nests."

[mattingly]

19 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

"Well, I don't like them, they wet their nests."

 

[Tech priest support]

On 11/18/2017 at 5:55 AM, Pattern Ghost said:

 

 

Actually it's simple. Even if the show is in some ways better looking than TOS  and gets away with themes TOS couldn't touch, like apparently some blob oozing all over a naked woman and having sex with her from something I saw on FB the show isn't better, just luck enough to be made in a time that allowed that and technology that allowed better looking sets and effects.

[Starlord]

2 hours ago, Tech priest support said:

Actually it's simple. Even if the show is in some ways better looking than TOS  and gets away with themes TOS couldn't touch, like apparently some blob oozing all over a naked woman and having sex with her from something I saw on FB the show isn't better, just luck enough to be made in a time that allowed that and technology that allowed better looking sets and effects.

 

I think the confusion was from you saying you can't comment on the show while commenting on the show and saying one show is better than the other when you've never actually seen one of said shows.

 

But I've been wrong before. 

[Hermit]

Our security chief has had two episodes focus on her. I've enjoyed both. 

 

Her conversation with her parents had me very thoughtful. Is she looked down on just for joining the military, or was she already considered somehow mentally deficient and they were telling her despite that challenge she didn't have to resort to her job? Either way, it is an interesting bit on her background

[zslane]

Yeah, I have developed a soft spot for Alara. I like the episodes that focus on her too.

 

So does the floor of a holodeck move so that you can physically run around the space? How does that work for multiple people who go off in different directions? And how does it deal with elevation change? Does the floor deform to create inclines so you feel like you are climbing? I never watched enough TNG to get a grasp on these technical details.

[BoloOfEarth]

I think it's all handled in a very complex manner using Handwavium and Dontthinkaboutite. 

 

It seems to me that sections of the floor would have to move / incline / rotate / etc. to accommodate people's movement.  But really, I suspect it's one of those things you're expected not to look at too closely or think about too hard.

[zslane]

Normally I wouldn't think about it because in the few episodes I've seen, Trek always stuck me in the virtual environment with the characters, and the artifice of the holodeck wasn't made apparent until the simulation was stopped. But in this last episode of The Orville, we watched a view of the simulation from the "control room", and we saw Alara just running in place while a portion of the corridor graphics moved past her. It forced the viewer (me) to thinkaboutit because the viewer (me) was suddenly madeawareofit.