unintentional joke of the day
First, some background: nerds around the world have issued a hue and cry over the potential cancellation of Enterprise, the Scott Bakula-led Star Trek franchise. It's a tragic situation: there's no money for the show because there are no advertisers, there are no advertisers because no one watches it, and no one watches it because it isn't very good. The injustice! Something must be done!
And it is. Across the world, they've held rallies and secured pledges for $3 million in funding for an additional season of Enterprise. Because this time, it'll totally be different. Say, have we gone back in time to fight Nazis yet? How many weeks since the last time holographic gunslingers from the Old West ran amok and took over the ship? Hey, maybe we could make all this a metaphor for something!
Well, I'm sure the professionals will be able to come up with something even better. They just need to be given the opportunity.
Which brings me to Slashdot, where I read this:
I think when you see this level of support for a show like Star Trek it shows it has passed the point of being a mere "TV show" and has become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon like jazz or abstract art or classical music.I have a friend who is a grant writer. She does work for charties applying to government agencies and private foundations for to get money.
I think there is a good chance of supporting Star Trek through the use of grants from the government and from charitable foundations, the way PBS and NPR do. Museums do this kind of thing all the time, look at the MOMA in New York, that thing isn't funded by selling commercial time. Someone from Star Trek should look into this.
Okay, I know it's just some guy on the internet. But so am I. And sometimes an idea is so innovative that you can't let it fade into that good night. So what do we think, guys? Is "flopsy mopsalon" onto something here?
Comments
HaHA! I knew that's why you don't have a photo of yourself on your main page wearing a tight t-shirt...
"I know it's just some guy on the internet. But so am I."
;)
Tom, you're mixing your Star Trek series. Sadly enough, they did go back and fight Nazis in Enterprise (they also fought Nazis on another planet on the original Star Trek series). However, the only series to feature any sort of gunslinging is Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Disclaimer, I haven't seen all the original Star Trek shows and I couldn't sit through all the crap that was Voyager.) During that gunslinger episode, they were confined to the holodeck, so they never really took over the ship. But you probably already knew all this and were trying to bait me into opining on Star Trek. Well, it worked.
As far as grants from charitable funds or grants from the government go, there are already people who believe that Star Trek is real and that the government is keeping it from us. Those people are clearly insane. Instead of funding the show indefinitely through some new method, I think it needs to be put on the shelf for several years and come back fresh when they have some new ideas.
Actually, brian, I'm pretty sure Tom is goading me into choosing between the MoMA and Star Trek as the proper recipient of my tax dollars. But as a bona fide liberal I think that the government clearly ought to use the implicit threat of violence to compel the population into subsidizing the leisure habits of freaks and geeks. Tax, spend, and boldly go!
Also, what with Susan out of town and all, this is a good opportunity to outline my totally sweet Star Trek franchise proposal. It will properly be called Crisis or something, but for R&D purposes we're calling it The Borg Fuck Everything Up. Basically, it's a series based off a moment in an episode in TNG in which Worf goes travelling through realities and witnesses one in which he and Riker are the only Enterprise crew left and of a dwindling Federation under serious attack from the Borg. So I think you could make a 24 like action-based series in which there's no "earl grey, hot," no holodeck rendezvous with Sherlock Holmes, no Q (okay maybe some Q), and for God's sake no Ferengi—just Riker and Worf and Data and hauling ass from one Borg attack to the next, making ersatz photon torpedos from the furniture in Ten-Forward, applying torture at will to various captured collaborators, and featuring constant explosions, tribbles, weird species of Borg, and some new hot chick who, by the unfortunate loss of the Enterprise's AC system, wears a bikini throughout the series. And is blue, probably.
hah! actually, I was trying to lure both of you into commenting on this post. You don't see MoMA and Star Trek mentioned together that often, after all.
Brian, I didn't know which of the series specifically had what occur, but regardless of the specific series you can always count on plenty of Nazi episodes (understandable -- Nazis are great bad guys); and of course Holodeck Follies (if no Holodecks are available, you may substitute mysterious energy beings who reflect the subconscious impulses of the crew).
Perhaps it's just me getting conservative in my old age, but I have to say I have some reservations about Star Trek Welfare. Kriston's right, though -- the franchise needs a radical new direction. The current series was a good idea, but they're falling back on the old tropes too quickly.
Perhaps we could reach a compromise and just issue a government-sponsored bounty on Rick Berman's head?
I don't actually believe that Star Trek ought to receive government funding, by the way. I do think it would probably be difficult to voice a full-throated opposition to the idea when I support the public subsidization of art, which is hairy enough without competition from even other marginal interest groups.
I don't actually believe that Star Trek ought to receive government funding
I'm glad we agree this would be a ridiculous waste of money.
Star War Bonds, on the other hand...
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