Hacker Cinema
Star Trek: Discovery
2017 · TV series · 5 seasons
Created by Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman
Science FictionFantasyActionAdventureDrama
Follow the voyages of Starfleet on their missions to discover new worlds and new life forms, and one Starfleet officer who must learn that to truly understand all things alien, you must first understand yourself.
7 positive19 negative1 mixed22 neutralfrom 49 commenters
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51 comments on Hacker News
Eh, the current 10-hour seasons are the worst of both worlds.
Telling a story in a "tight 90" means making very deliberate choices about what to include, what not to, and how to make scenes do double duty. Having 23 episodes a season lets you slow down, spend time with the characters that's not all focused on the season plot, it lets you have B-stories in every episode. A 10-hour season doesn't get to do that, but it doesn't enforce the same discipline as 90-120 minutes.
Compare Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I greatly enjoy SNW, but the characters and their relationships with each other are in no way as substantial as in DS9 (or even TNG, which was much less character-focused than DS9).
That "heavy hand" is precisely what makes things controversial or political. For instance Star Trek has pretty much always been 'woke.' My favorite series is Deep Space 9. The captain is black, the second in command (as well as the chief science officer) is a woman, the chief medical officer is Mideastern, and so on. And there were countless episodes that hit on all typical social justice themes, yet somehow these things were presented so 'naturally' that it all just felt very 'appropriate', for lack of a better term.
By contrast I was completely unable to watch things like Star Trek: Discovery (them choosing a title that would be acronymed as STD is already weird) because the identity politics were force fed so hard, to say nothing of 'Mary Sue'ism. It felt very unnatural and like a thinly veiled political rant. Back to PBS, Bert and Ernie - gay? I mean very possibly, if not likely. The creators say no, but they'd probably say no even if the answer was yes. And it's fine. It's introduced in a way that feels very natural, but when you suddenly start making such things overt, and one whose answer must be discussed and force-fed, it starts feeling much more like a political statement than just an inclusive context.
I'll certainly be letting my children watch old Sesame Street et al, but I think we'll be turning to things like Masha and the Bear for contemporary programming.
This is mostly an issue for content produced to still be on regular tv and streaming, like on Paramount. Star Trek Discovery and Strange New Worlds, for example, are not as dramatic as described above but you can always spot where the adbreak would have been. Cut to black and a re-establishing shot at the least. These are modern shows like you describe but still the TV medium has some influence.
One thing I do notice more and appreciate from streaming (sense8 in particular) is that shows are more varied in their runtime. Episodes being 40 minutes to 75 in length just depending on the needs of the plot, not even finale related or anything
Star Trek: Discovery is... Something.
In my opinion, it's one of the worst (non canon now) Star Trek shows but it does get marginally better if you can struggle through the first season or two.
I would not recommend it unless you have nothing else to watch
In my opinion, the 30 year old B5 CGI is better than the most recent season of Star Trek Discovery in 2024, which I found to be quite bad, especially in the opening scene of the first episode.
I also enjoy every streaming service solving many technical problems the others have already solved.
The most painful one for me right now is that Paramount+ has all their videos rendered with black bars top and bottom. So when I watch the latest Star Trek New Worlds and Star Trek Discovery on my 34" 1440p ultrawide, it literally has a black border all the way around the edge. Watching the same episode on Prime Video, it entirely fills my screen.
I've reported this to them a couple times over a year and they haven't done anything about it. I imagine, most likely, this is possibly some kind of combination of compatability with some devices that need videos rendered at a certain resolution and not wanting to have too many different encodes of videos. But it is quite annoying not to be able to have the video fill my screen.
>Except for a couple of cross over main cast characters in DS9, and of course Picard, Trek has been basically TNG-cast free but for guest spots through Voyager, Enterprise, three Kelvin-timeline films, Lower Decks, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and (I think) Prodigy.
Do you hear yourself?
I’m waiting for the day it all goes Mickey Mouse. Then, we’ll get some real Star Trek. What do I mean by that? Take away the special effects for a moment and look at the characters. Picard: There was never a better suited actor to be captain. Kirk: The machismo was sexual assault but somehow his band of rando’s made it out. Captain Sisko: Man who tamed the wormhole, and the politics that went with it. Janeway: Need I say more? She showed that woman are up for the job.
I’m not saying the cast of the current Gen shows isn’t good, it’s that their characters have been Marvelized. Everything’s a big end-of-world event or taps into your familiarity with a previous character to tend credit to the new. I’m a fan until the end but c’mon… Star Trek Discovery is Avengers. Strange New Worlds is trying to bring back the Abrams spark but lacks depth. Cheesy one liners and fast scene switching so that it makes you feel you’re on a ride at the fair.
I’d love for it to slow down, do the character development. How about a different ship during a familiar timeline or some way to explain the now 4 (P/K/AP/AK) timelines?
Out of curiosity... why not alt.startrek?
Other than the "not a lot is happening there now", but there's some activity.
The most recent posts on the server I'm on:
The Lower Decks crossover to live action in Strange New Worlds Star Trek Discovery Canceled ‘Galaxy Quest’ TV Series in Early Development at Paramount+ Jack Crusher is how old? Star Trek The Lower Decks S03E09 was everything I wanted. (spam - into the kill file that poster went) TOS Film marathon (crossposted trolling - more kill file material) Captain Burnham mob/cops/big city episodes (Star Trek Discovery) (crossposted trolling - figured out how to do more complicated rules - "cross posted to more than 3 groups and newsgroups match \.politics\." with this reader) (crossposted trolling - even more kill file material) Ode to Spot. (this post is from 2012) When will the new Star Trek merge with the Twilight movies? (this post is from (2011)
No emoji. No reaction gifs. No memes.
Just text content.
edit: and as I write this, a new post just showed up in the past 2 minutes about Strange New Words S02E01.
>Your view is right at home in a Star Trek The Next Generation world where everyone's needs are met and people act ethically, with good intentions and are in return treated fairly. A civilized, meritocratic world that doesn't exist.
Right, but this is why ST:TNG is such a nice show to watch, because it's the kind of show that some of us, at least, want to live in. Whereas Star Trek Discovery is a terrible show to watch, because it's not. Who wants to watch a show about a bunch of unlikable characters that fight each other and backstab? (Apparently a fair number of people these days, or else the show would have died quickly.)
>Like it or not, we live in a zero-sum dog-eat-dog world
If you want to see the best depiction of the universe we live in, watch the Star Trek episodes about the Mirror Universe (esp. the "In a Mirror, Darkly" 2-parter in Enterprise). Those episodes show humans as they really are in our universe, unlike the moral and conscientious humans depicted in ST:TNG.
I used to download TV shows via IRC, Usenet, or other means back in the 90s because nobody would take my money. I did the same when Star Trek Discovery Season 4 came out from piratebay.
For episode 2 onwards I could buy the season of Discovery through apple tv, which I did. I assume S5 will be on Paramount Plus which is now available in my country, so I subscribe to that if I want to watch it.
As far as I'm concerned if I can't buy it, it's fair game, if I can pay for it then I will, or I won't watch it.
This type of development is unfortunately par for the course with modern Hollywood remakes of older media and probably will only get worse over time. I am not familiar at all with the LoTR stuff that's going on, but it seems somewhat similar to what they've done with Star Trek. Discovery and (especially) Picard make a mockery of Old Trek in terms of vision and values. I saw a recent parody video that described the TNG Federation as "Vegetarian Space Socialists" that everyone finds annoying but it seems like the writers of Picard have taken it literally. I won't argue that Old Trek is the epitome of subtlety, but the basic premise was that the Federation represents a utopian society that has mostly put aside material concerns in order to promote peace and prosperity in the galaxy. Star Trek was a series of stories about what would happen when you take people from this utopian society and put them in uncomfortable and challenging situations. This worked amazingly well.
Picard and Discovery throws this out the window. It seems like the rough outline of the show was to shoehorn as much heavy handed modern political controversy in between the big budget space battles. The characters seem to be raring to fight at every juncture which is pretty much the opposite of the Federation's MO.
This has also happened with Star Wars but I feel less bad. I think Star Wars was always a bit less "high brow" than some of the other media being discussed here, but Disney seems to have scoured the entire script of the original trilogy for any lines they could stretch out into scenes for a spinoff film ("Kessel Run" for Solo, "Many Bothans Died" for Rogue One). To me this stuff is straight up cringe - at the same level as bad fan fiction.
Ultimately I have started to regard most of these films as products in the same sense as breakfast cereal at the grocery store. When they put out a new neon green version of lucky charms I don't get mad - I don't pay attention at all. Luckily, it seems like there are some filmmakers who are making interesting films even post-COVID (Robert Eggers, David Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) so I have some hope for the future. But these mega-budget reboots? I do my best to ignore their existence at this point.
I'm seeing the same pattern I saw with Star Trek: Discovery (race and gender) and Captain Marvel (gender) - a critic would say 'I don't like the plot/logic/world/strength of the hero' and be accused of racism/sexism/not liking strong female characters, where this was untrue and just used to dismiss valid criticism. On the other hand, there was a contingent of people who did dislike it based on somewhat sexist or anti-woke reasoning, but as far as I could tell this was overall a small group. A bit of conflation later and, well, you get the worst of all worlds: critics who feel like they are being censored (or who are), and fans who will not accept the slightest criticism without slinging accusations of racism/sexism/whatever, along with a contingent who is deserving of the latter criticism but is more likely just laughing at the total chaos.
The actual quality of the show, on the other hand, almost ends up being irrelevant. Personally I usually wait about two seasons before judging a TV show.
The evidence doesn't back you up here. The Rise of Skywalker made half as much money as The Force Awakens. Rey and Rose Tico merchandise didn't sell. Viewing figures for recent Disney Marvel TV shows have been extremely low. Star Trek Discovery can't be viewed in many countries because no network broadcasts it. Netflix's attempts at woke series tend to get cancelled after the first season. And so on. The poor performance of woke entertainment products is visible for all to see.
I agree. The first two episodes of The Rings of Power are unbearably boring. But let's wait.
Anyway, IMDb ratings are getting totally unreliable to me. I wasted hours of my life that won't come back, watching some show called The Terminal List that scored a solid eight. Carnage of Asimov's Foundation is 7.4 and that... thing, The Wheel of Time 7.1.
I wonder if there's a way to see evolution of rating, for me Star Trek Discovery seasons are nine, seven, two, pass... but it's holding at 7 right now.
I paid extra for the ad-free Paramount Plus. I was getting un-skippable pre-roll ads before and during Star Trek Discovery episodes. I contacted support and they said that ads would sometimes show up during live TV. They didn't have an answer for why ads were showing during Discovery. They pre-rolls would sometimes take 5-10 minutes! I could go fix a snack, put in a load of laundry and when I'd come back the pre-rolls would still be playing.
Anyway, other than the programming the service itself was awful and after going through the Star Trek back catalog I cancelled. I may sign up again but after the bad experience, I am not inclined to watch again. I really wouldn't want to watch with ads if they paid me to do it.
> The other thing is their habit of releasing entire seasons at once
The Korean studios are quite smart with this. They release 1 or 2 episodes on a weekday just like Netflix used to with Star Trek Discovery.
88 pages from 2021 involving Wilfred Laurier social sciences?
You know what's more interesting, in the months since this study it has become much more clear what's really going down.
NYTimes realized their echo chamber and practically ordered their journalists to exit their echo chambers. Which upon doing so they somewhat returned to better journalistic standards, NYTimes suddenly showed some excellent legitimacy.
CNN is basically in complete collapse because they were too late. Can't see how they recover without some absolute hail mary.
Rachel Maddow had a bit of a sabbatical and then got rebranded and is on air far less. MSNBC ratings not looking so hot lately.
Meanwhile Fox is in dominant #1 position. There's objective measurements that the democrats moved far left creating the polarization. You have star trek discovery a ultra top secret missions best of the best crew... but every character is LGBT. Wtf are they trying to say? Even Trek fell into this same trap as those above.
Has anyone checked out Star Trek Strange New Worlds episode 1 where they literally say second US civil war. The story was intentionally weak as hell to ensure everyone who watches it sees they are talking about the USA. The importance of getting those 2 parties talking together again. That working together for a better future is really the only way.
Even Trek suddenly realized their own mistake. It makes for such an amazing first episode.
I feel the opposite, actually. I'm a pretty staunch privacy advocate, but the biggest thing I feel when, say, "obtaining" "through unspecified means" the latest season of Star Trek Discovery is: the studios who made this have no idea I'm watching this, and if enough people did that, it'd look like no one was watching it, so they're less likely to make a season 4.
The secondary argument is, they use that viewing history to influence the production of new shows ("people like shows set in space, lets make more space shows"). I also don't feel this is unreasonable. Ultimately this isn't tracking journalists' movements in an authoritarian regime; its entertainment. If my viewing history leads to the production of more shows I enjoy, who is losing?
Not all tracking is bad. Pragmatically, its not an open-and-shut thing, for me.
I couldn't agree more.
I'm a die hard fan. I started watching Stargate SG-1 when I was a kid in 1997 (season 1). I've seen ever single episode of every series. Every movie. All multiple times.
I REALLY don't want to see a modern reboot that is like Star Trek Discovery. I'll be so disappointed if they do.
I do think it is possible to revive the franchise and make a compelling show. However, it would be tough to pull off. I love that the show never took itself too serious. Stargate Universe was the opposite and flopped because of this.
> Like when black actors get representation in media previously dominated by white people, to me that is just a good thing, but I see reports that many think this is “wokeness”, which they think is bad.
In the 90s Will Smith starred in Independence Day, and absolutely no one complained (as far as I know) because Will Smith is awesome and he deserved the role. See also Blade from the same era.
People get upset when it's clear that a person has been chosen for a role/position just because of their skin colour/gender/sexuality rather than their talent. I can't actually think of any movies that have done this, but plenty of TV shows (Star Trek Discovery).
Obviously some roles require the person to be of a certain race for it to appear authentic. Lots of older films used white actors for middle Eastern roles, which is seen as "white washing" and is therefore wrong. The latest Ghost in the Shell race swapped the main character to be American, and was rightly called out for doing so.
Basically we should be allowed to criticize both ways...
> How are films supposed to get funded if people get them for free?
> What is your model for how films should get funded?
The same way free-to-air TV pays for itself - adverts. Either a couple of ad breaks in the film, or rotating watermarks on screen throughout the film. And make getting it easier than me finding the equivalent torrent. Release schedule - cinema, streaming, 'free'.
When films aren't available on any of the streaming services I subscribe to, what do you expect me to do? Pay another £60 per annum to watch one film on a streaming service I'll never use again? I read somewhere there are 1000 streaming services in the UK, and over 2000 in the US.
I've said before on here, it's a shame we didn't have today's bandwidth back in the mp3 days, because that forced the hand of the music industry to back iTunes, or Spotify, and only now they're beginning to fragment a little. If the video industry was under pressure from widescale cheap piracy, we'd have an industry wide streaming site. Instead we have Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, and so on.
One day before launch Paramount pulled Star Trek Discovery off Netflix to their own streaming service. Can you guess what the most pirated TV show was over the following weeks?
To be clear, I don't agree with piracy, but I have zero sympathy for movie studios and their shitty walled gardens.
I can't speak for others but I generally turn to piracy when legal options are unavailable or unviable.
For example it's basically impossible to legally watch anime with English subtitles in my region, so I have no alternative to piracy.
It's the same story for more mainstream content. There was no legal way to stream Game of Thrones in English when it was being aired. There's no way legal way to stream Star Trek Discovery as it's being aired. Were I in the US, the only legal options, as far as I know, are to pay ~$10/month each for streaming subscriptions that would only be used for these shows.
EU-commissioned studies like [0] show that I'm not unique.
So the solution here, in my opinion, isn't to try to outlaw piracy (it's actually legal in my country) but to make the legal options more reasonable. Eliminate regional restrictions entirely. Eliminate content silos (require studios to license on the same terms to all streaming platforms).
Plus, at least one study has shown that piracy doesn't actually hurt sales [1], save for movies still in cinemas.
[0]: https://torrentfreak.com/eu-study-more-people-consume-legally-but-stubborn-pirates-remain-201125/
[1]: https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact.html
Agreed Star Trek Discovery is horrible so I would actually suggest ... reading. I'd suggest as a start a) Expanse Series (it's way better than the TV series) and the Murderbot Series
These are all things I've experienced in the past three years, though some started or came out earlier.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (even better if you liked Children of Time)
Ted Lasso on Apple TV+
Star Trek: Discovery on CBS/Paramount (especially Season 2)
Letterkenny on Hulu
Cobra Kai on Netflix
The Country Things album by Granger Smith
I use subtitles all the time because I can't filter out the sounds easily.
There's a baseline assumption with a lot of "high quality" movies and television that every member of the audience has perfectly working senses. The sad fact is "low quality" reality TV is much more accessible. Sporting events are also a lot easier because you can hear the people talking clearly.
For a more concrete example Star Trek: Discovery is difficult for me to hear and follow everything, whereas the older TV series and the new the animated ones are much easier.
Star Trek Discovery Season 4 was released only in the US and Canada, unlike the previous 3 seasons.
Thus it was impossible to watch it in the UK, so out comes the torrent client.
It is now available for purchase on itunes, which I assume I can play on my TV either via the apple tv app, or via airplay, so that's fine, and I paid for it, no need to torrent. At least for those of us in the UK.
In the majority of countries though it's still not available.
If your company is unwilling to sell the content, you can't complain about people getting it from other sources.
Star Trek Discovery started a new season this week. Usually here in the Netherlands episodes come out a day later, so I thought I'd watch the last season finale the day before it came out so I was up to speed.
Turns out Paramount pulled the show from Netflix to put it on Paramount+
As a Star Trek fan, j thought what the heck, let's see how expensive a subscription to that is. Turns out it's not available in this country. It'll launch as part of something called SkyShowtime, a separate service including multiple American streaming platforms, somewhere in 2022.
So I shrugged and added the show to Sonarr. Within minutes, I had all the episodes available for my viewing pleasure.
It's like these companies don't want my business. They pull content from my existing subscription, make it impossible for me to buy their service and then complain about the terrible threat of piracy at the same time.
It's time for someone to set up a service that aggregates all other services so viewers can enjoy their content without chasing platforms. I'll pay for the extra services once content isn't being shifted around anymore, which is clearly going to take another decade.
> my son made a point about the "unfilmable" books, which are a lot of dialogue
I'm still surprised about how slow they can make an hour-long episode. Between fistfights, face closeups and gratuitous sex scenes and drama, barely anything advances. It's following the Star Trek Discovery formula but in slow motion.
You're kind of wanting it both ways, to some extent.
I mean, I'm annoyed that Netflix had a bunch of Marvel movies, but not all of them. I'm annoyed that I used to watch them on Netflix all the time and now they're gone.
On the other hand, it's because Disney+ exists, and there's no reason for Disney+ to ever remove them (preasumably), since they own the rights to them so there's no licensing deals to work with. That means that they should be there "forever".
Likewise, I don't want to also have to pay for CBS All Access to watch the latest Trek, but, if I do, it does mean that I don't have to worry about Star Trek: Discovery disappearing down the road.
The only way for things to be there "forever" is to be streaming from the company that owns the copyright, and more and more such companies are setting up their streaming services and can then guarantee that "foreverness", but that comes at costs for them, and thus costs for us. It's unfortunate, but it feels as though it's either one or the other.
During the pandemic I can blaze through new additions to the Netflix US catalog with speed, then its time to go find something new to watch for the next few weeks. All of the regional Netflix get movies and shows that the US does not - I was able to watch Star Trek Discovery in its entirety on Netflix Germany for example. Netflix Hong Kong has an amazing catalogue but I could not get that one to work with my VPN. Netflix UK is the most disappointing because it is more or less devoid of UK movies and shows aside from Monty Python and Peppa Pig (both already available in the US anyway).
> All my profit comes from winning settlements from pharma companies".
I followed the Canadian generics market in the press in the 80s and 90s. It was awesome, like the Wild West days - "what are they up to this week?"
Sherman and Shulman (Quincy TV show basd on him?) were like mini-Trumps.
That plus the Toronto calculus textbook author who needed a commercial architect ("no straight lines, please") to build his $24 million mansion, Integral House, with its own world-class concert hall. It was Sarek's house in Star Trek: Discovery.
Canadians might be polite, but have just as much business drama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Shulman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_House
Oh hey Charlie Stross! I'm a bit of a fan.
- - - -
I have a vague idea that a kind of spittle bug foam design made from bubbles of various diameters nested to provide redundancy might work well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spittle_bug#Spittlebug_nymphs
It's could be simple, flexible, easy to construct or modify, and resilient to impacts. I'm not an engineer or scientist though.
- - - -
A tangent, if I may...
I think we need more near-term hard sci-fi set in the future that e.g. Musk's space trucks are about to enable, to get more people excited and involved.
I've been trawling through Netflix and cable recently looking for inspiring, even-slightly-realistic sci-fi and it's a barren desert out there. There are a handful of shows that aren't bad, and I've heard good things about "Black Mirror". One the other hand, I watched a clip of "Star Trek: Discovery" the other day and had a minor apoplexy. It's more like a cartoon than the actual cartoon.
In contrast, I have a "100 Sci-Fi Movies" DVD set that my sister got me for Christmas one year, and a lot of the older black & white sci-fi movies are practically documentaries for space exploration and colonization. Sure there are silly aliens and such, but the technology and settings are realistic (at least compared to e.g. Star Trek or Star Wars.)
I think some concrete visions of what it might actually be like to attempt to build and live on a moonbase or Mars colony would inspire people to want to really do it.
from TFA this was a manual takedown, meaning CBS had someone in meatspace take this down. If i had to guess why this happened its two reasons:
- Joe had a negative review of the show, and made several valid points about its lackluster writing and dialogue.
- CBS' streaming service, "All Access" is getting hammered by critics on reddit and blogs. Even after gobbling up Nickelodeon kids programming its still underperforming. A week after Picard aired, CBS released the first episode on Youtube free of charge in order to drum up business.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/09/25/cbs-badly-misplayed-their-hand-by-making-star-trek-discovery-a-paid-streaming-exclusive/
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/10/16862278/cbs-all-access-star-trek-discovery-streaming-service-analysis
I think the "polarized hull" is only in the Star Trek Enterprise prequel which takes place prior to the founding of the federation and takes place where humanity had just achieved Warp 5 and has pathetic weaponry. Every single other Star Trek show (Original Series, The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space 9, and the later movies) use shields as in "shields up" or "raise shields". I believe the new Star Trek Discovery should also have shields.
I think this is a plot in one of the new Star Trek discovery episodes in season 2. "The Sound of Thunder" if I believe.
Maybe I'm desensitised from political agendas in films now, but from Captain Marvel I really didn't get a overwhelming feminist agenda that I felt impeded it from being a genuinely entertaining movie.
I'm disappointed about Brie's comment about Wrinkle in Time, however. It really wasn't a great film. The single feminist angle of 'girl saves boy' doesn't make it a great film. All I got was an "evil is a alternate entity you can defeat and bad actions aren't your own fault" lesson. This I thought was quite dangerous for children.
It's unfair to discard people's opinion just because they're white and 40. Just as much it's unfair to review bomb a movie because the actor said something in an interview.
I fully get this article for defending this movie and I'm also upset by the disproportionate ratings we're seeing from critics and audiences (see Orville vs Star Trek: Discovery). But something else stinks about this article.
I have the, perhaps somewhat unpopular, opinion that this the concept has ruined most TV.
It wasn't Babylon 5 that sparked the trend, but in 2004 Lost, Battlestar Galactica and then later on a few following shows like Prison Break came along and were very successful with the long story arc.
The concept of the seasons-long story arc is now basically endemic in modern TV. I think it's a situation where the highs are higher, but the average is much worse across all TV.
The issue I think is that the writers can't experiment like they could in the past with the more monster-of-the-week type formula.
A bad idea in a modern show is baggage you have to deal with for the rest of the show. In old school TV, the end of the episode came around and erased all sins. It also forces the writers tell a complete story each episode.
Consider Star Trek: TNG. There are a whole pile of really terrible episodes of that show, but there are also amazing ones. I don't think it's possible for a show like Star Trek: Discovery to ever reach the heights of TNG given the baggage it has signed itself up to deal with.
Nowdays, with a bit of elbow grease, piracy can be easier than Netflix.
In a purely hypothetical example, I could be running Sonarr and Radarr to gain almot immediate access to any TV-type media release as soon as it's available. I could feed the files into Plex and thanks to Plex Pass, I could then download the episodes of my favorite show in the morning and watch them on the go. If a show becomes unavailable due to legal reasons (Netflix' Star Trek Discovery) or other reasons (removed from media library, not licensed or license ran out), I would have a local copy. I could hook up bazaar to obtain subtitles for all those would-have media files. I wouldn't have to deal with resolution restrictions or siloing. It would be all in one app that contains all my media. This experience would be free plus the work I have to do myself to set it up.
But the actual reality is that I have 3 streaming apps on my phone because neither of the three offers all the tv shows, movies and anime that I want to consume. Shows vanish for various reasons and I cannot consume them anymore. They're gone. I have to put in actual work to discover where the current media is best obtained and sometimes the price is too high. For this experience I have to pay.
If Netflix and Friends want to keep people out of piracy, they need to stop siloing, stop geofencing their offerings and start competing around the service of media, not the availability of media.
Piracy almost always wins the availability contest. Piracy at the moment wins for Geofencing and other DRM (there is none). Piracy doesn't silo my favorite content. And piracy doesn't cost the end user anything, only the producer.
Now, I'm not advocating for piracy. I'd rather live in a world where piracy wasn't necessary or even lucrative for the end user. It's very frustrating to be stuck in the one where I throw money at the subpar solution.
> You are forgetting 1 aspect. Advertisement. I gladly pay extra to not watch commercials.
Yes, it's good to point that out. I think people _are_ willing to pay more to have no ads, and have on-demand access to content.
I would throw in another thing I could have thrown in originally as well, which I didn't really think of - the TV equivalent of "killer apps." The reason I stick with Amazon is because they picked up a couple of shows I really, really love - The Man in the High Castle and The Expanse. I don't want to lose access to those.
Similarly, I briefly subscribed to CBS All Access while the new Star Trek: Discovery season aired last year - and when Season 2 comes out, I'll likely do so again. I love Star Trek so much that I'm willing to pay the $7 per (call it $3 per episode) month just for that... but as soon as it stops coming out, I cancel.
Right -- and Star Trek Discovery is just a CBS show in the US. When either show airs in the US, the new episodes are available immediately on Netflix in the UK.
If I want to watch them in the US, I either have to pay per-episode/season on Google/Amazon/iTunes. CBS offers access to their entire library, but at $10/mo, it's more than a Netflix subscription.
My point is just that comments about the Netflix library being better in the US vs elsewhere holds true less and less every day.
I always find it weird when folks say Netflix sucks outside the US. Much of the library in the US feels like a mish-mash of old television and b-grade movies. When I'm in the UK, I have access to new episodes of television. Shows that you have to pay for on a per-episode, or per-studio basis in the US (Star Trek Discovery; The Good Place) were available in the UK on Netflix just after they aired in the US.
People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it anyway (for decades) and continue to do so. Now we're being asked to buy a bunch of streaming services and we'll bitch and moan, but ultimately we'll pay because every major platform will have at least one show that justifies their existence.
I associate CBS with bland procedural crime dramas and awful three-camera sitcoms. CBS All Access would have been doomed without Star Trek: Discovery. Admittedly, the show isn't particularly good, but I'm a trekkie so it doesn't matter. On the plus side, I discovered The Good Fight (a surprising smart, entertaining and well written show) so I now I have a legitimate reason to give a damn about All Access.
And then Apple will offer their own gateway drug (Lord of the Rings?) and Disney (...well they could just offer their back catalogue alone and still be a major player) and so on.
I'd personally recommend:
* The Next Generation (starting point, but be prepared to sit through the slower first seasons). * DS9 * Voyager (however optionally skip anything from the Kess seasons that you feel like)
I only liked about 1/3rd of Star Trek Enterprise episodes, the entire series is kind of filler. Has that same wasted potential feeling that I got from Stargate Universe; it COULD have been more interesting if the pacing had been better and if they had focused on fitting the stories in to an overall plotline (much more like Babylon 5; which, BTW, you should TOTALLY watch if you haven't).
Star Trek Discovery was good, but is more an edgier more action packed thriller kind of series than the earlier series. I do like where they're going with rebooting the overall universe though and I feel that this brings the modern FX capacity in to the series in a way that makes sense for today.
For something you can show to your parents or if you generally don't get Star Trek, the Orville is a GREAT comedy focused take on the ideas that Star Trek (everything) classically presented, but covering modern social issues.
The issues I have with Hulu aren't all that different from the issues I have with Netflix. Yes, content is removed without warning, but it is on Netflix too. Yes, there's a delay between a show being broadcast and it showing up on Hulu, but there's a considerably larger gap with Netflix. Neither of these applies to Hulu's own original content, same as it doesn't with Netflix.
All the streaming services, IMO, share the same flaw - they can't provide all the content I want to watch. I really wish we'd ended up in a world where I can just buy the latest episodes of Black Mirror, Handmaid's Tale and Star Trek: Discovery when they come out, rather than have to maintain separate monthly subscriptions for each, but alas. Ironically, I can buy a lot of network show content by the episode on iTunes/Google Play/whatever.
Well, don't forget it's not just their own shows. It's been said Netflix's license payment is responsible for financing the $7m budget of Star Trek Discovery. Again, not their own show, but that's irrelevant for the point the parent is making (Netflix hasn't branched out into other content types and spends $7m per episode on video, but won't spend a similar amount on games).
That having been said, I don't really see the point for Netflix to pursue some kind of mini-steam play. Not a core competency and all...
Pardon my double post, but it’s worth mentioning that the Star Trek: Discovery people chose to name a character after real-life mycologist Paul Stamets. Naming the character after the person they got a bunch of ideas from is an unusual step for a TV series, and I have to wonder if part of their decision to do so is in the service of spreading not only his ideas but the results of his research, which shows that fungi are a branch of life that ought to be studied much more closely than the scientific community has done in the past. The more people we have looking at them the better!
While it is a comedy, if you don't get the jokes, it ends up more like a Star Trek show.
I think it is the best Star Trek-like show since Stargate Unvierse.
I am watching Star Trek Discovery, and I am confused by the higher tech of the Discovery over the tech used in the Star Trek movies that happen 10 years later. Good fight scenes and battles, but Klingons keep being rebooted in every Star Trek franchise? I am guessing there are like 4 or 5 different types of Klingon races like TOS Klingon-Human fusions, Star Trek TMG/TNG Klingons with bigger forehead ridges, Star Trek Nemesis Romulan-Klingon hybrids created with cloning, Star Trek Reboot 2009 Klingons, and now Star Trek Discovery Klingons with more ridges (Ruffles joke?) and in black or white skin colors? I wonder what the Commander Worf reboot will look like?
I'm only a few episodes in, but I really like the ideological conflict they've set up. The Federation believes itself to be a unifying force for peace and coexistence. But the Klingons see the Federation as demanding conformity, destroying individuality, and threatening Klingon identity. Though the Federation is clearly meant to be the "good guys", both sides are sympathetic and there are parallels to modern politics (globalism vs. nationalism). Hopefully, the writers can resist the temptation to turn the Klingons into an irredeemable caricature (their statements aren't encouraging: https://www.salon.com/2017/09/22/star-trek-discovery-creators-our-klingons-are-secretly-trumpsters/).
Content isn't fungible. Netflix, Prime, and Hulu put together may have more content than you could ever watch (arguably, even just one of them alone does), but if it doesn't have the show or movie you want, you're boned.
I've had Netflix, Prime, and HBO for years. A couple months ago my gf and I really wanted to watch The Handmaid's Tale, which is only available on Hulu. Hulu charges $12/mo for their no-ad plan (hell if I'm going to pay for a service and still have to suffer through ads). The idea of paying $12/mo for a single show seemed a bit much to me... in the end I signed up for the free trial to watch it because I couldn't find pirated copies on Usenet.
Now Star Trek Discovery has just come out, and CBS wants me to give them $10/mo for the privilege of watching it. No thanks.
It's funny, because we've all jumped at the chance to "cut the cord" and ditch our cable subscriptions, but we've replaced it with the online version of exactly the same thing. We still don't have a la carte pricing for TV shows and movies for the most part. At this point I might be paying more per month than I used to for cable.
I'm similarly disappointed in those films, but I'm holding out hope for Discovery, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery .
Looks to be mostly online and set in the original timeline. Bryan Fuller is involved, he wrote for Voyager and has a history of dialog heavy shows after that (pushing daisies is so underrated by the way).
"It may be no coincidence that in the last two weeks Paramount has struck a deal with Netflix to stream new episodes of the much-awaited 2017 Star Trek reboot globally within 24 hours of network broadcast."
Er, it certainly would be a coincidence, since the EU investigation began some time before the Star Trek reboot was even conceived, and additionally since no such distribution deal between Paramount and Netflix exists, since Star Trek in its TV form is a CBS property.