Why the hell aren't there more "space opera" / futuristic CRPGs?

[lightbane]

Is that some kinda anti semitic comment lightbane? Shatner and Nimoy were Jewish in origin - have some nuance instead of blaming everything on something simplistic when Trek was as good as it was partly due to Jewish people from day one.

I don't think so. I worked with a jew guy IRL once and he seemed okay, if a little weird. Star Wars and other works also had Jewish producers, but when you notice formerly good works becoming shit, over, over and over, and there's almost always the same kind of people behind, you start seeing a pattern.

 

[wahrk]

I thought Picard was okay, far from great but okay... either way though, my main point is I think their issue is writing. Not in the sense of "this betrays Trek" because I don't think it does, but just in the sense of being mostly poor plots with weak characters and motivations. Discovery especially is just a mess, which is why it's getting soft-rebooted at the moment.

Well I don't disagree about the writing, I just think there's more fundamental differences too. It calls itself Star Trek but the DNA isn't the same, because the people behind it don't really understand Star Trek (or they just don't care).

I have some optimism for Strange New Worlds, as the cast is good (and was the best thing in Discovery) and it seems to be focused on exploration and optimism.

Unfortunately I don't have optimism for anything involving Kurtzman, although it would be nice to be proven wrong. I'm not that excited for more prequels anyways. I wish we could get another jump forward like TNG into new ground, rather than leaning on old characters and filling in things that didn't really need to be filled in.

The modern Star Trek is based and mirroring current Star Trek writers thoughts on society and the Star Trek universe. The previously established axioms could have narrowed down the influence of the current writers upon the Star Trek universe. So yes you don't need to understand this to say modern Star Trek is shit, but you need it to understand how Roddenberry could have lowered the current Marxists influence upon his creation. But hindsight is 20/20. Or you plant a seed that eliminates such influences from the get go.

The problem is not that the latests failed attempts take them self to serious. The problem is that they are for made for retards, showing of incompetent people spewing ideological stupidity with pride and guided by luck and protected by plot armor and enemies incompetence and they try to deconstruct previous established characters, like Spock or Kirk and succeeded with destroying Picard.
So the question is: Why is this so? I have distilled the answer to the obvious fact that the featured characters do not act like military people that execute thoughtful and precise learned and trained behaviour and protocols. But why are there the plot holes and illogical behaviour? That is just the result of the lack of knowledge and incompetence of the writers. Because the writers lack the military roots and scientific knowledge and they are just college indoctrinated children that will not consult people who understand such things, because this are Nazis for the writers.
The Star Trek characters so positive in OG, because this is how Roddenberry has witnessed his fellow soldiers in WW2 and he wrote down their character into Star Trek ( i assume this ). And the new Star Trek characters are bland characters, because characters need limiting flaws, so they can work long upon them. Characters need strong motivation for doing certain things and from time to time question them self. The characters simply told need a "human nature" and that is despicable to those marxist writers.

Someone has posted something similar in this or other thread pointing out that all the great fantasy and Sci-Fi writers (Roddenberry, Tolkien and usw) have a military background and i concur.

I don't think we disagree here. This is how I would describe much of Nu Trek as well. It's the people behind creating it that are the issue. This sort of thing certainly isn't unique to Star Trek. I don't know that there's anything Roddenberry could have done.

 

[fantadomat]

LoL anything after enterprise is liquid shit. Enterprise was passable at best,but still light years ahead of modern trek. People that watch that garbage should be executed for being too dumb!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

t is not a decline, what you see is the results of those same values that 90s Star Trek went on about all the time. Plant the right seed and a beautiful flower will grow, plant a bad seed as Star Trek did and it will grow into a weed, the beauty of the seed does not decide the beauty of the flower.

Are you sure? Nu-S. Trek went out of its way to rape the corpse of the original and mutilate it. I doubt the original writers were thinking about "modern year" when doing the show. I admit it was idealistic to hell and back, but compared to trashfire like this...

wait what the Discovery video isn't a fan spoof?
I saw it before and thought it was

 

[Wesp5]

But why are there the plot holes and illogical behaviour? That is just the result of the lack of knowledge and incompetence of the writers. Because the writers lack the military roots and scientific knowledge and they are just college indoctrinated children that will not consult people who understand such things, because this are Nazis for the writers.
The Star Trek characters so positive in OG, because this is how Roddenberry has witnessed his fellow soldiers in WW2 and he wrote down their character into Star Trek ( i assume this ). And the new Star Trek characters are bland characters, because characters need limiting flaws, so they can work long upon them. Characters need strong motivation for doing certain things and from time to time question them self. The characters simply told need a "human nature" and that is despicable to those marxist writers.

I don't believe the military background is reallly important but for SCIENCE fiction, the scientific knowledge might well be, as the same thing basically happened to SW and I don't know if George Lucas ever was in the army. And even though SW has a lot of fantasy roots, there were scientific rules in that universe, that needed to be cared about which the sequels never did. Also I agree that all of this comes from writers who didn't understand why the old ST or SW worked, instead they use the fame of the franchises to transport their own ideologies. Oh, and this can even happen to the creators of these worlds, as the Alien and Terminator franchise have shown us...

 

[Ashigara]

wahrk DalekFlay Darkzone

I find myself agreeing with different things you have all said.

If politics is downstream of culture, as the phrase goes, then culture is downstream of religion/philosophy probably. As Darkzone said most of the problems with Star Trek: Discovery to me seem rooted in the cultural and philosophical assumptions of the writers - their thoughts on society. They could never write Star Trek in a "Horatio Hornblower" or "Master and Commander" way unironically because they don't believe in it. Instead they must mock such values, because their worldview is at such variance.

Like wahrk said, I certainly agree not every show needs to be a DS9. On a certain Star Trek forum (that is packed with woke people), there is a split between people who see TNG as the epitome of Trek and people who see DS9 as the epitome of Trek with the latter generally seeing TNG as naive. So I can understand the reasons why there is now a backlash arguing DS9 was grimdark and began the slide into edgy. There is the case that TOS was optimistic, but it was more nuanced in showing the human condition than TNG - this unfortunatly gets used to defend DSC which is hardly worthy of being in TOS's shadow.

At the end of the day the reason I think DSC is so repulsive is exactly as Darkzone said: everything, from trained military behavior to scientific integrity to human nature goes against the woke post-modern worldview of the clique that was inexplicably given Star Trek despite their terrible professional record and horde of past Golden Raspberry awards. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will be no better unless they suddenly change personal philosophy and have a revelation mid-career.

This is the DNA change wahrk - the old writers like Naren Shankar were scientists, humanists and modernists - the new ones are post-modern anti-humanists. Humanism shares something important with Tolkien's Christianity or Lucas's Buddhism/Christianity - it believes truth exists, and thus art has something to reach towards.

I don't think so. I worked with a jew guy IRL once and he seemed okay, if a little weird. Star Wars and other works also had Jewish producers, but when you notice formerly good works becoming shit, over, over and over, and there's almost always the same kind of people behind, you start seeing a pattern.

I would put that down to the factors above, i.e. general culture's current state which accelerates the process of each simulacra being a redacted copy of the original. Afterall, it's not like Anglo-Saxon Americans aren't producing hordes of woke writers too.

Seth MacFarlane interviewed four of the most prominent staff writers of TNG for the blu ray release - Ronald D Moore (always seemed the most outspoken about going away from Roddenbury's lack of character conflict - did a lot of DS9 and made Battlestar Galactica), Narendra Shankar (started as a scientific consultant, has a PhD in Applied Physics - now runs The Expanse), together they also work on For All Mankind, Brannon Braga (used to be criticised for presiding over the decline of VOY and ENT but they look like gold in hindsight compared to what we have now - helped MacFarlane make Neil Degrease Tyson's Cosmos and The Orville) and Rene Echiavarra.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

re: Military background
Could it help contribute? Sure. But I think the more important thing is what they did in the military.
Roddenberry took an interest in aeronautical engineering shortly before WW2 and got his pilot's license while trying to join the Army Air Corps(we didn't have an Air Force yet.) He flew bombers in the war then went on to become a plane crash investigator. I don't know much about investigating plane crashes, but I assume the people doing it know a heck of a lot about aeronautical engineering.

Most of the good sci-fi authors have engineering or mathematical backgrounds, something that is very desirable for the military.
Arthur C. Clarke? Radar specialist in WW2, degree in mathematics and physics.
Stephen Baxter? Mathematics and engineering degrees.
Robert Heinlein? Navy academy, degree in engineering
Larry Niven? Mathematics
...

Look at nearly any modern Hugo award winner(nearly all female and non-white), and they have nothing similar in their background.
Nora K. Jemisin? Psychology, a non-science.
Arkady Martine? degree in "Armenian studies"(wow, they really do give out macaroni arts degrees now don't they)
Mary Robinette Kowal? degree in "Art Education"


If you want to know why modern sci-fi sucks, that's why.

 

[Cael]

Eh, I don’t know if I agree with this. Nu-Trek doesn’t “follow through” on the original ideals, it completely ignores them and I often doubt if the current writers even know what the original ideals were. Original Trek was an idealistic version of humanity who had solved their issues. It imagined the future of scientific progress as we understood it and some of its best episodes were characters sitting in a room debating philosophical and moral issues of their mission.

Nu-Trek is a dark, violent action movie where the federation is heavy-handed leftist commentary of current-year America and isn’t the slightest bit concerned with science or philosophy. That‘s not Star Trek and it’s certainly not Roddenberry’s vision. It’s not a natural “growth” of that vision as much as it is a complete refutation.

Today's Trek is very much centered on TNG, not the original show. TNG was briefly a Roddenberry style show before he stepped back (and died) and the people running it added in the human drama and darker themes they felt it was missing. They're very blunt about this in the commentary tracks, Ron Moore especially. Since the show blew up after this time, and most people think DS9 was the best series in the show's history and it embraced conflict and darker themes more than any other, I don't think they see this as a flaw. I certainly don't see it as a flaw in the recent shows either, their flaws reside elsewhere (poor writing mostly).

tl;dr I get that boomers have nostalgia for the original, but way more people have nostalgia for the TNG era and that's what the new shows are going after (along with younger newbs).

I actually preferred DS9 and Voyager to TNG or OS. Mainly because the Federation in those series were unambiguously the good guys with high ideals (and a few rotten apples). TNG (the movies) made the Federation into some Machiavellian political labyrinth and Admirals plotting to gain personal power left and right. Nu-Trek is a shitshow of sjw wankfests.

 

[Cael]

But why are there the plot holes and illogical behaviour? That is just the result of the lack of knowledge and incompetence of the writers. Because the writers lack the military roots and scientific knowledge and they are just college indoctrinated children that will not consult people who understand such things, because this are Nazis for the writers.
The Star Trek characters so positive in OG, because this is how Roddenberry has witnessed his fellow soldiers in WW2 and he wrote down their character into Star Trek ( i assume this ). And the new Star Trek characters are bland characters, because characters need limiting flaws, so they can work long upon them. Characters need strong motivation for doing certain things and from time to time question them self. The characters simply told need a "human nature" and that is despicable to those marxist writers.

I don't believe the military background is reallly important but for SCIENCE fiction, the scientific knowledge might well be, as the same thing basically happened to SW and I don't know if George Lucas ever was in the army. And even though SW has a lot of fantasy roots, there were scientific rules in that universe, that needed to be cared about which the sequels never did. Also I agree that all of this comes from writers who didn't understand why the old ST or SW worked, instead they use the fame of the franchises to transport their own ideologies. Oh, and this can even happen to the creators of these worlds, as the Alien and Terminator franchise have shown us...

Star Wars is basically fantasy in space. It isn't really sci-fi. Lucas wanted to make a samurai style epic, and hence why the lightsabre exist. And hence why Star Wars repairs goes "No! This goes there and that goes there!"

 

[Wesp5]

Star Wars is basically fantasy in space. It isn't really sci-fi. Lucas wanted to make a samurai style epic, and hence why the lightsabre exist. And hence why Star Wars repairs goes "No! This goes there and that goes there!"

Even fantasy needs rules, otherwise Gandalf would have snapped his fingers and destroyed the ring. In case of SW instead of stupid ST technobabble the rules were simple, but most obvious in regard to spaceflight. Like you can't jump out of a gravity well and you can't jump into a gravity well and you can't jump through shields and you can't jump through ships. Alll of which were important to set the conditions for the SW space battles. All of which the sequels ignored and thus in retrospect made all space battles in the old movies superfluos. The only solution would be that nobody remembers, which is typical for ST and especially for the latest ST movies, where beaming from one star system to another basically makes space flight itself completely superfluos. Don't they have technical advisiors to notice such things?

 

[Cael]

Star Wars is basically fantasy in space. It isn't really sci-fi. Lucas wanted to make a samurai style epic, and hence why the lightsabre exist. And hence why Star Wars repairs goes "No! This goes there and that goes there!"

Even fantasy needs rules, otherwise Gandalf would have snapped his fingers and destroyed the ring. In case of SW instead of stupid ST technobabble the rules were simple, but most obvious in regard to spaceflight. Like you can't jump out of a gravity well and you can't jump into a gravity well and you can't jump through shields and you can't jump through ships. Alll of which were important to set the conditions for the SW space battles. All of which the sequels ignored and thus in retrospect made all space battles in the old movies superfluos. The only solution would be that nobody remembers, which is typical for ST and especially for the latest ST movies, where beaming from one star system to another basically makes space flight itself completely superfluos. Don't they have technical advisiors to notice such things?

I was referring to the interview that Lucas gave ages ago, where he outright stated he wanted to make a samurai epic in space. SW wasn't originally conceived as sci-fi. It was fantasy. It was only later that a lot of tech stuff was hashed out, and that was mainly in the EU, which was completely ignored in the movie sequels.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Hmm, I'd love an epic type of conquest story in space, like a real brutal one. Not Dances with Smurfs, but something dark and savage, with a lot of intrigue in the background and some Revolution style stuff thrown in.

 

[Wesp5]

I was referring to the interview that Lucas gave ages ago, where he outright stated he wanted to make a samurai epic in space. SW wasn't originally conceived as sci-fi. It was fantasy.

As far as I know he wanted to make something like the Flash Gordon serials of his youth which of course were not hard science fiction. Surely he didn't much care about the technical details and I bet that the SFX guys at ILM made up a lot of those! At least I know this is true for Babylon 5. JMS wrote the stories but RonThornton and Foundation Imaging handled the science behind it!

 

[Darkzone]

I don't think we disagree here. This is how I would describe much of Nu Trek as well. It's the people behind creating it that are the issue. This sort of thing certainly isn't unique to Star Trek. I don't know that there's anything Roddenberry could have done.

We have never disagreed. I'm trying just to explain the possible thought process of Hermes and why it i think that it is correct. And i assume i can do this, because of certain overlap between me and him.

I don't believe the military background is reallly important but for SCIENCE fiction, the scientific knowledge might well be, as the same thing basically happened to SW and I don't know if George Lucas ever was in the army. Oh, and this can even happen to the creators of these worlds, as the Alien and Terminator franchise have shown us...

The reason why i emphasize the military career over the requirement for scientific knowledge is shown directly in this already posted video (to be precise it was it that has convinced me):

Spoiler

Look at how the female captain is talking to the sciences officer. This exactly is the major problem of Nu-ST and not the scientific discrepancies. Do you really think that commanding officers talk to other officers in the US military in this manner? But it is not only about the communication and personal behavior, but also about military tactics, strategy and behavior that are ruining the series, like in the case of ST: Picard with the extraction of the female Android. You need at least advising specialists for this kind of things if you were not in the military. Suspension of Disbelief is only granted if the actions are logical and coherent to the known reality and this is also true to the rule of cool in sci-fi.
Do i think that scientific knowledge is a prerequisite for good sci-fi author? Yes. But in an established franchise (with established science and lore) it is less required then people who have worked in certain fields. Space ship combat actions require people who understand physics and military tactics. Personal combat requires people who understand this else you end up with shit like Rey lightsaber shit.
Let me show the opinion of The Critical Drinker that exactly hits the nail on the head and he has posted it yesterday, but it is about SW:

Spoiler

re: Military background
Could it help contribute? Sure. But I think the more important thing is what they did in the military.

Spoiler

Roddenberry took an interest in aeronautical engineering shortly before WW2 and got his pilot's license while trying to join the Army Air Corps(we didn't have an Air Force yet.) He flew bombers in the war then went on to become a plane crash investigator. I don't know much about investigating plane crashes, but I assume the people doing it know a heck of a lot about aeronautical engineering.

Most of the good sci-fi authors have engineering or mathematical backgrounds, something that is very desirable for the military.
Arthur C. Clarke? Radar specialist in WW2, degree in mathematics and physics.
Stephen Baxter? Mathematics and engineering degrees.
Robert Heinlein? Navy academy, degree in engineering
Larry Niven? Mathematics
...

Look at nearly any modern Hugo award winner(nearly all female and non-white), and they have nothing similar in their background.
Nora K. Jemisin? Psychology, a non-science.
Arkady Martine? degree in "Armenian studies"(wow, they really do give out macaroni arts degrees now don't they)
Mary Robinette Kowal? degree in "Art Education" If you want to know why modern sci-fi sucks, that's why.

I concur and therefore i have written it in my statement above.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Arkady Martine? degree in "Armenian studies"(wow, they really do give out macaroni arts degrees now don't they)

Armenia is a fairly distinct culture and language, which, if taught properly, should give an author a basis for creating interesting fictional characters and languages. In theory, that and the rest of her education should give a good basis for fictional worlds. In practice, she chose Arkady Martine as a pen name and is published by Tor, need I say more?

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

For the uber nerdy and s-f fans, like us, sure that's what we want, but I think for the more normal human being, they need a bridge to fantasy, and that's the semi-familiarity of the mediaeval setting.

That's just an excuse nepotists in publishing houses use for promoting insipid hacks. Competent writers figured out solutions for bridging the mundane world to crazy settings ages ago. For example, Stargate used buried wormhole tech to directly bridge the gap, but a writer could also go with the isekai route not often explored in science fiction, have the world go through some kind of apocalypse, or have someone wake up from cryostasis after centuries.

 

[Ashigara]

wait what the Discovery video isn't a fan spoof?
I saw it before and thought it was

It's from a short series they did between seasons, God knows why.

...and thus sadly it's canon now.

 

[Semiurge]

There's plenty of silliness to be found in every Star Trek series, especially the original show, beyond just the Tribbles.

The Tribbles plot was about the increasing popularity of gerbils as pets. Consider the properties of gerbils - cute, harmless looking critters with the potential of becoming a fast breeding invasive species.

Also, more charming publicity photos of Shat were needed.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Spoiler

I have never seen any of the ST after TNG (maybe one or two episodes of Voyager) - I thought the second one was a parody or is it?

 

[Butter]

Spoiler

I have never seen any of the ST after TNG (maybe one or two episodes of Voyager) - I thought the second one was a parody or is it?

New Trek is indistinguishable from parody.

 

[DraQ]

Spoiler

I have never seen any of the ST after TNG (maybe one or two episodes of Voyager) - I thought the second one was a parody or is it?

New Trek is indistinguishable from parody.

New RL is indistinguishable from parody.

 

[Mikeal]

Simple, Tolkien was inspired by Early Medieval Era not futurology.

 

[Darkzone]

Spoiler

I have never seen any of the ST after TNG (maybe one or two episodes of Voyager) - I thought the second one was a parody or is it?

I have never seen the anything beyond Voyager ( it was already losing me ), so in this matter i have not seen the entire episode. What i have read about this thing is that it supposed to be a parody, but it is also about how you create the parody with the contained characters.
That is why i recommend you the video of the creator of this video explaining the matter:

Spoiler

Every good joke contains a core based on truth ( at least the good ones and that makes the black / gallows humor so good ) and therefore i recommend to you to analyse the entire thing.

And as our simple feudal japanese infantry soldier man (ashi == feet, garu = lightweight) said and i also have heard: it is supposedly now canon.

 

[Darkzone]

Today i have received an out of season birthday present from my favorite youtuber.... The Fourth Age. Because as i have written he kind of agrees with me that there are two seeds for Star Trek: The OS and TNG.
In his video he responds to the Literature Devil's Video "Is Superman Still Relevant Today" ( this video compares Superman and My Hero Academia on important traits, while making analogies to the Plato's Allegory of the cave and C.G.Jung Personas (Masks) and Archtypes) and while he agrees with LD, he just shines light upon the gray areas. The Fourth Age with The 'Progressive' Philosopher King is a Tyrant ( 14.23 onward about Star Trek and Picard's Progressives ):


I recommend both (Literature Devil and especially The Fourth Age) youtubers to all who read this, but especially to Radek the Jedi Padawan, Frank the Jarl and the draconic Commissar. If you can understand what The Fourth Age is saying then you can understand what i have written to George Ziets in the thread concerning his new game studio.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Are you sure? Nu-S. Trek went out of its way to rape the corpse of the original and mutilate it. I doubt the original writers were thinking about "modern year" when doing the show. I admit it was idealistic to hell and back, but compared to trashfire like this...

Yes, I am very sure, and they did not rape any corpses, they followed through on the original idea. Same as America of today is the same thing as was planted during the founding. Would the originators like what they see if here today? Probably not, but this is what they seeded.

Eh, I don’t know if I agree with this. Nu-Trek doesn’t “follow through” on the original ideals, it completely ignores them and I often doubt if the current writers even know what the original ideals were. Original Trek was an idealistic version of humanity who had solved their issues. It imagined the future of scientific progress as we understood it and some of its best episodes were characters sitting in a room debating philosophical and moral issues of their mission.

Nu-Trek is a dark, violent action movie where the federation is heavy-handed leftist commentary of current-year America and isn’t the slightest bit concerned with science or philosophy. That‘s not Star Trek and it’s certainly not Roddenberry’s vision. It’s not a natural “growth” of that vision as much as it is a complete refutation.

I hate to break it to you guys but Star Trek was always a Jewish subversion. There is no such thing as Nu-Trek, this is the natural progression of Star Trek. It was always "woke" if you want to call it that.