Value Subtracted @ ValueSubtracted @startrek.website

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They made a resurgence in Winnipeg after the Sobeys/Safeway merger, when a bunch of Safeway locations were forced to be sold off.

It's a decent linear service, with lots of channels to choose from. I wish some of the channels had a greater collection of songs, as I use it as background music quite a bit, and it can get repetitive.

I doubt they use antimatter reactors planetside - very risky, and antimatter don't come cheap. They likely rely on fusion more than anything.

But hey, the wind is free. Why wouldn't you use it?

I've seen a few episodes here and there. It's charming, and doesn't take itself too seriously (or, honestly, very seriously at all).

I will say that S4 gets better as it goes along, and a lot of people would cite it as their favourite.

I honestly think season three is one of the best overall seasons of any Trek series. It's got good energy, and I've talked pretty extensively about why I think the ending is pretty great, actually.

killing Book’s family was kind of idiotic

The poor species was doomed once they were revealed to be spore drive-compatible. They were never going to take away the lead ship's unique feature.

Also, background character development feels a bit weak.

I've probably talked about this before as well, but I think Disco was pretty experimental with the extended cast - they essentially gave what would have been wordless extras on other shows and gave them a bit more to do.

Ultimately, I think it was a bit of a failed experiment, but at least some talented Canadian actors were able to pad their resumes.

Time will tell on that one.

I think I read that Giamatti's character has a connection to one of the leads, so I'm kind of hoping he's someone's Bad Dad.

That is not what this article is about.

That is a bold claim.

Apropos of nothing, I watched "How It Ends" (pretty middling) the other night, not realizing it was filmed in Winnipeg. Pretty wild to see Skinner's Wet 'N Wild pop up.

Yeah, they announced the second season renewal very early - right around the time production on season one was starting.

Hopefully it's a good sign.

The jacket looks really nice. It's a shame it's probably a crew thing.

Agreed, though it seems unlikely that we're going to get any more of it, sadly.

Sure, I don't think anything is absolute. But I think there's a general impression that as the older fans literally die off, there aren't enough younger ones to replace them, let alone expand the popularity of the franchise.

I'm struggling to find it now, but I read a Jonathan Frakes interview last year (I think) where he expressed a similar sentiment.

Basically, he said that the fans that he sees at conventions are getting noticably older, and there aren't as many younger people joining the fold.

I think the current approach is the correct one, even if it produces a few misses here and there.

A variety of tonally distinct projects, aimed at different demographics, telling stories.

Well, I guess the DECA era has officially begun. We'll see what happens next...

Hmm. This unfortunately only just made it through to the instance, thanks to the large lag we've been experiencing from lemmy.world.

I guess I agree with the premise of the article to the extent that the ensemble cast was pretty charming, and I honestly wouldn't mind seeing any of them again in the future.

The most "successful" part of the movie to me was Georgiou's arc - she's really the only character to get a complete arc in the movie, and it was admittedly pretty thin.

I definitely wouldn't assume that any of Fuller's ideas were in the show being the first season.

Like Brian, I would love to see an in-depth book about the first two seaons of Disco in particular.

Related to this article, VFX supervisor for "Picard," "Strange New Worlds," and season 4 of "Discovery" posted this rather interesting thread to Mastodon:

Reading the article going around about Bryan Fuller’s Discovery, and people’s “What If” scenarios reminds me of 2016 and my brush with it interviewing for the VFX department there:

I got a chance to interview as a potential Compositing Supervisor. It’s a trend which continues today that some productions have small in-house groups to concept things, sometimes do shot work, directly interface with a show to do certain things faster and cheaper than going to vendors, like previs.

I get to Los Angeles Studios downtown to talk to the Producer, and the first thing I notice in being in the offices; no real concept art to be found, no white board with scheduling info; I think I saw 3 pieces of artwork (only one of which was ever reflected in the show, but more about that later). No one really in the office yet, but it was also a late evening and they weren’t in production yet.

Kinda a red flag, but maybe the stuff was somewhere else I just couldn’t see.

I go through a pretty standard interview process, and when asked what questions I might have, I start with some pretty standard ones: How many hours a week? 60. How big a team? 20ish. What types of work are you planning on doing, concept, prep shots, actual shot production? All the VFX work of the show.

OK big red flag.

That is not enough to do this kind of show in the 2010s. Maybe a TNG show with TNG amount of effects an episode, but not modern TV.

When do you start shooting? In months. Do you have scripts to breakdown and budget staff? No. Any scripts at all? No.

WHAT? These two things do not go together, especially on a new show. Pilots for shows will float around for sometimes years being prepped and budgeted.

Do you have art for phasers, transporters, warp, or even ships? They showed me like a temp transporter. And the 3 pieces of art on the walls. Maybe they had more and didn’t want to show me. I did sign an NDA

What kinds of shot pipeline do you have? We have Lightwave and Nuke. No I mean pipeline. Nope.

At that point, I knew this was going to be a disaster and wanted no part of it. I finished up pleasantly with them, and got the hell out of Dodge. There is bootstrap small high performance team work, which I’ve been a part of, and there’s throwing yourself into a meat grinder. It didn’t matter if they wanted me, I didn’t want them. Which was crushing for a lifelong Star Trek fan.

Months away from shooting and no scripts on a completely new show that was supposed to launch a streaming network is a recipe for disaster.

Later, I found out that after spending millions of dollars in prepro, Fuller had “departed” and all those people were sacked. Fuller, while being responsible for some really loved shows, also has a history of lots of aborted projects, or projects he left really early on. But I’m sure other people actually know that story better than I.

At that point Alex Kurtzman was brought in to actually make a show that could be produced. I went back to the VFX place I was working for, and would just be a viewer like everyone else. I wouldn’t get a chance to work on Trek until 2019 working on Star Trek: Picard for DNEG.

Anyway millions were wasted for nothing that was able to be shot. Just something to consider with “What Ifs” of Star Trek. I really hope someone writes a book about Star Trek production someday.