Our kids were Playmobil’s exact target market at 8 years old.
They saved up gift money to buy the sets, but had to make do with the planetary explorer sets that existed at the time since there were no Star Trek sets.
Not to say that fan collectors might want that kind of thing too, but our kids would have actually played with them.
The Mirror Universe is some kind of true branch that happened much earlier, such that even the physics of light are slightly different.
Kovich’s explanation of branching universes suggests that they’re not common but also that as they increasingly diverge, it becomes less and less possible to corpse over and those who do may not be able to survive.
He noted that no contact had been possible with the Mirror Universe in several centuries.
The 24th century Kelvin Universe officer who came over to the Prime Universe in the 32nd century died, as would have Georgiou. But the Kelvin Universe was close enough that he was able to cross at all.
The physics are so much better. The hard scientists in our household are happy.
Mimeoed zines are in my past I confess.
I can’t say they were always as civil as they might be. Even in the late 80s with laserprint copies in vogue, there were folks who thought shouting everything in AllCaps was the way to get their message across.
@BROMETHIUS@lemmy.world you may wish to check the pinned message at the top of this community.
This instance was created by the senior mods of r/startrek and r/DaystromInstitute. The original mod of r/startrek is modding here. They’re hoping to attract some of the other Star Trek subreddits to join. The invitations have been made. So far, they’ve decided to keep the number of communities to three in order to let the conversations get going.
It feels as though Dr Erin MacDonald has earned her consultant’s fee helping them sort out the physics.
We’re out of the mess of the ever-expanding manifold time that Marvel and DC have bought into.
Beyond that version of infinitely branching manifold time / multiverse being offside, basically contradicting modern physics, it creates a situation where every possibility exists so nothing our heroes do matters, and nothing ever done to fix a time incursion matters either.
Instead we see that forks in the timeline can prune other timelines. Both branches can’t continue to exist, and the river of the timeline has some fixed events (time crystals) that pin it, pull it back to its original course.
So it would take something extraordinary, even on the Trek scale of extraordinary, to create a true ongoing branch. The creation of the Kelvin universe is associated with the Romulan Supernova. Knowing now that the Romulans have been interfering with human development over centuries and using temporal agents to do it, having a major disaster to the Romulans impact human history seems like a corollary. With a major event like a sun blowing up, we can say we’ve got a threshold for creating a separate sustainable universe.
As for TNG Parallels, I still love the episode, but perhaps we could reframe it as all the short run alternate timelines. For as unlikely as it was, Worf got back to his own timeline and Enterprise. Time fought back.
Having Pelia say it, with the lens of historical perspective, is perfect.
The Federation may not use the word or describe its society that way, but someone who’d lived in the United States in the 20th and 21st century might.
It’s Canada.
Red cars are patriotic. Or at least they aren’t the flag they are in the US.
Prodigy, like TAS before it, has been outpacing the shows targeted at the franchise’s principal demographic in critical acclaim.
You’d think Paramount would have taken the lesson from TAS providing the franchise its only series Emmy.
Some thoughts here.
I agree these kinds of assessments require a bit of a deep dive.
Let’s look at the business case then, the economics and the long haul marketing strategy.
Does the narrative around Prodigy being unprofitable, a write off hold up? Could Whitbrook be putting his finger on something valid?
Let’s also keep in mind that the head of scheduling for streaming at Paramount has been saying that their business strategy for Paramount+, as they integrate Showtime, has said repeatedly that their streaming strategy is built on ‘the 3 Fs’:
Fandoms, franchises & familiar faces.
Prodigy quite obviously was designed to tick off all three elements of the strategy, so what’s the failure point or mismatch as they winnow?
The narrative that Prodigy wasn’t popular enough on Paramount+ doesn’t scan.
First, from what metrics we have available publicly for 2022 (Parrot Analytics mainly),
So then, if Prodigy is doing well in attracting and retaining subscribers and Star Trek is one of two principal franchises supporting their business strategy, where’s the problem?
Let’s look at Nickelodeon, the original destination for the show.
Nickelodeon’s linear audience numbers have been falling overall. Prodigy’s numbers aren’t great on Nick, but none of Nick’s new shows are taking off as they once were.
Going into the pandemic, Nick was such an important anchor for cable in the US that Paramount was obliged to make promises for content exclusivity windows for Nickelodeon when it negotiated its last carrier contract for the US with Comcast. When the pandemic came, suddenly kids were online as never before, and Nickelodeon quickly diminished in its power to attract linear viewership.
So, one can draw an inference that it’s Nickelodeon, not Paramount+, that’s financial trouble is a key point in the decision. Nick is losing money on Prodigy, that needs an exit pathway for an expensive show it can’t afford to partner in.
BUT…
Why then, given Paramount’s 3F streaming strategy, animated shows less expensive and underrepresented in Paramount’s streaming offerings, doesn’t Paramount just rework the deal between the streaming side and Nickelodeon?
Here’s where systematic bias may be coming into it -
Paramount+ has been successful in building a broad subscriber base across ages, genders, race and ethnicity while still gaining ground in ‘middle America.’
This is not the case for other streamers. MAX is struggling to bring together the male-skewed HBO audience and the older-female Discovery one.
Let’s look at what else was cut along with Prodigy.
a show targeted at the LGBTQ audience canceled during Pride month
a show targeted at a niche female demographic
a family show headed by one of the strongest female leadership icon characters of the 90s, with another principal character voiced by a Black actor.
Paramount used a lot of dense marketing technobabble about fit and alignment to explain that the choice to cut and write this particular set of 3 shows. They’ve previously talked about popularity during the cuts of Showtime’s more niche, arty products.
If we listen to them, and accept their justification, the implication is that these LGBTQ, women and black targeted shows no longer are their demographic priorities. They don’t fit with where P+ with Showtime is going even if they all obviously check the 3F boxes. Meanwhile, there’s been no language backpedaling on the 3F strategy.
At the same time, Paramount Global is trying to sell off BET and BET+.
The conclusion isn’t necessarily misogyny, but clearly that Paramount Global is no longer strategically prioritizing its diverse representation of demographic groups.
They are telling us, their advertisers and their investors that Paramount/CBS is turning the entire business back towards prioritizing a much less representative audience.
There’s an implicit assumption that they can continue to retain the demand of women, racially diverse and LGBTQ demographics, while skewing their new investments towards the older, middle American audience of the Yellowstone franchise and the slice of the Trek audience that Picard season three was targeted to draw back in.
My conclusion - Whitbrook has a point. They wouldn’t have done this with Picard or Kirk.
It says more about Paramount’s strategic shift away from prioritizing representation and diverse demographics more broadly.
It’s not just misogyny, but it’s in there. Without unconscious bias and systemic misogyny, the scheduling folks wouldn’t assume that they can hold girls and women as an audience while taking them out of principal roles.
If anything Janeway and the Voyager officers should be given their own limited live-action series or direct-to-streaming event movie.
I’m in no way sold on the idea of a 25th century using the Titan-to-Enterprise G as a nostalgia tour for legacy-of-the week and supporting an overarching arc of Jack’s hero’s journey.
While Picard season 3 made a strong case for an early 25th century show, what’s been proposed in the series finale and Matalas Twitter and interviews isn’t a satisfactory concept. Matalas is overpromising relative to what a single ship-based show can carry. I’d rather have the Titanprise really get out further across the galaxy, not be tied down to featuring legacies, not locked into serving a principal character’s journey, but rather to build a new ensemble exploring the 25th century that we still haven’t seen much of.
For Janeway, other Voyagers, the DS9 ensemble, I like Kurtzman’s idea rather of legacy characters getting each their own vehicle and focus be it 1 or 2 hour standalones or a limited series.
Never thought that letting an episode run longer in streaming would be viewed as a negative.
I wouldn’t have cut anything.
That’s exactly it.