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cimoreneI feel ridiculous just typing these words because Star Trek has always been philosophically pretty dippy, but like... Discovery seems to be going dippier?
Like, previous Star Treks were very earnest and occasionally it would indulge in stopping on a peak for a Bruckheimer shot with some dramatic lighting and quote some literature (that they would stop to tell us was super old and how it's so weird that they still know about it).
But this new show has not only replaced the log entry soundclips with voiceovers that typically skip straight to overly-emotive, like, poetry and suddenly talking about the human condition or whatever in a voice throbbing with passion and it's like... oh, so this character is ALSO one of those dramatic people from parties that I always meet and am like "That's right, people like this don't only exist in books; why are they so exhausting, and how can they live like this?"
Right, pardon. Not only that, but they also keep just falling into Meaningful Emotional Conversations that make me remember all the jokes & anecdotes my Philosophy for Social Science majors lecturer told us about what it was like to teach Philosophy for Psychology majors.
Don't get me wrong, there were always plenty of characters in each show who would earnestly have written and/or declaimed the kinds of speeches that keep grabbing my attention in Discovery, but the space devoted to that tended to be limited to comfortable-for-me levels, and I usually didn't have time to do more than a brief chuckle at the cheesiness or a couple of sentences of saying "Hey, that metaphor doesn't work at all..." back to the TV before the Captain's Log or whatever would fade out and the action would start.
These voiceovers are going all in on the poetry, landing just shy of Madeline Bassett levels, and sometimes the rest of the stuff going on (like the plot and the dialogue and stuff!) comes across strongly enough to let me tune it out, but other times it goes on for long enough for me to mentally start keeping that habitually scathing list of all the dippy fallacies committed which has become automatic after a childhood in a Unitarian Universalist congregation (and in the car with my cynical parents on the way home taking turns saying "Oh PLEASE"). If she's feeling uncharitable, my wife might tell you that this list isn't entirely mental. I have a low tolerance for voiceover narration in general, and combined with the dippiness and my no-doubt genetic predisposition to talk back to audio[and/or]visual entertainment... well. She might be considering ways to watch without me soon at this rate.
Like, previous Star Treks were very earnest and occasionally it would indulge in stopping on a peak for a Bruckheimer shot with some dramatic lighting and quote some literature (that they would stop to tell us was super old and how it's so weird that they still know about it).
But this new show has not only replaced the log entry soundclips with voiceovers that typically skip straight to overly-emotive, like, poetry and suddenly talking about the human condition or whatever in a voice throbbing with passion and it's like... oh, so this character is ALSO one of those dramatic people from parties that I always meet and am like "That's right, people like this don't only exist in books; why are they so exhausting, and how can they live like this?"
Right, pardon. Not only that, but they also keep just falling into Meaningful Emotional Conversations that make me remember all the jokes & anecdotes my Philosophy for Social Science majors lecturer told us about what it was like to teach Philosophy for Psychology majors.
Don't get me wrong, there were always plenty of characters in each show who would earnestly have written and/or declaimed the kinds of speeches that keep grabbing my attention in Discovery, but the space devoted to that tended to be limited to comfortable-for-me levels, and I usually didn't have time to do more than a brief chuckle at the cheesiness or a couple of sentences of saying "Hey, that metaphor doesn't work at all..." back to the TV before the Captain's Log or whatever would fade out and the action would start.
These voiceovers are going all in on the poetry, landing just shy of Madeline Bassett levels, and sometimes the rest of the stuff going on (like the plot and the dialogue and stuff!) comes across strongly enough to let me tune it out, but other times it goes on for long enough for me to mentally start keeping that habitually scathing list of all the dippy fallacies committed which has become automatic after a childhood in a Unitarian Universalist congregation (and in the car with my cynical parents on the way home taking turns saying "Oh PLEASE"). If she's feeling uncharitable, my wife might tell you that this list isn't entirely mental. I have a low tolerance for voiceover narration in general, and combined with the dippiness and my no-doubt genetic predisposition to talk back to audio[and/or]visual entertainment... well. She might be considering ways to watch without me soon at this rate.
(no subject)
Date: 26 Feb 2019 06:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 28 Feb 2019 10:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 28 Feb 2019 04:02 pm (UTC)"Director Skinner, I know this is outside my pay grade, but...I'm losing my mind. I have a three- and a four-year-old. Nothing they do makes me this crazy. Not even the time they flushed my phone."
"You can flush a phone?"
"Apparently, yes. Please, it's like wading through the output of a creative writing class. Please, please could you have a word with them? They can paste that stuff into their blogs. Tell them to start blogs. They'd like blogs."
"Donna, tradition is, the new hire gets the X Files reports."
"Are you saying this is some kind of hazing, sir?"
"No, no, it's just...fair. Nearly everyone in your position comes to me about Scully and Mulder's reports. I worry about the ones who don't. Scully and Mulder are... They're excellent agents. But they're both pointlessly over-educated, and they encounter a lot of...unusual situations. Writing is one of the ways they blow off steam. I'm not sure I want to know what else they do. From the number of FOI requests we get, I think they even have fans. There's an art student in Chicago who keeps sending us mini-comics she's doing for her senior project."
"Those things in the break room? I thought they were religious tracts."
"Not for real religions. Dave filled in and mailed one of the coupons and now he's a minister for the Church of the Jersey Devil. He can perform weddings."
"I will keep that in mind, sir."