effinstephen

effinstephen, 10 months ago

Block, block, block. You have to beat Youtube with a hammer to steer the algorithm, but it’ll catch on eventually. And one thing to avoid is hate-watching. Youtube doesn’t care if you’re only watching it because you hate it, it just cares that you’re watching it.

And right-wingers get into Star Trek for similar reasons to liberals–because it’s entertaining, and it reflects their values. Only, they don’t see the space communism, the egalitarian society, the infinite diversity in infinite combinations. They see the mighty starships roaming a war-ridden galaxy, essentially stand-ins for American Navy vessels (as every “Constitution” class ship makes clear in its name). They see simple morality plays where a majority-white-male crew consistently demonstrates the superiority of their wits and values over other races, while also hooking up with alien women. It’s a myopic view of the franchise, but it can certainly describe a lot of the original series, a fair amount of nineties trek, and the whole Abrams trilogy, too.

effinstephen, 11 months ago

The Temporal Cold War has made ripples in the timeline. The Romulan time traveler in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” strongly hinted that history was at least a little bit different than it had been, with the date of the Eugenics War as case in point. I think the writers are freeing themselves up to make minor changes to canon. I don’t think it’s a branching timeline, though, it’s still Prime. Just a little bit different, like Gabriel Bell being replaced by Captain Sisco.