Maybe illegally revoking the citizenship of people we don't like is a bad thing?
The sort of thing they want to do?
The Roddenberry Archive is probably the best place - navigate to the section called "765874".
They just link to YouTube videos, but I find the actual YouTube channel challenging to find stuff in.
It seems to be improving now - it was over 10 days behind at one point.
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.
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.
The Federation didn’t need 31 to win the war
Do we know that for certain? The cure to the virus was actually pretty fundamental to the Female Changeling ordering the Jem'Hadar to stand down. She refused to surrender until Odo linked with her and cured her.
It thankfully stops short of "meat":
Such animated characters are composed of solid matter arranged by transporter-based replicators and manipulated by highly articulated computer-driven tractor beams. The results are exceptionally realistic "puppets," which exhibit behaviors almost exactly like those of living beings, depending on software limits.
Objects created on the Holodeck that are pure holographic images cannot be removed from the Holodeck, even if they appear to possess physical reality because of the focused forcebeam imagery. Objects created by replicator matter conversion do have physical reality and can indeed be removed from the Holodeck, even though they will no longer be under computer control.
Obviously, there is an inconsistency here, as we saw that later holographic characters could not be removed from the holodeck, and therefore must not have been replicated.
The Technical Manual explanation is not that replicators create matter out of pure energy - they are a type of transporter that dematerializes raw material and rematerializes it to match a molecular pattern. They are "matter-energy converters" only in the sense that the stream of particles during the materialization process could be called an energy stream.
These replicator system headends are located on Deck 12 in the Saucer Module [of the Enterprise-D] and on Deck 34 in the Engineering Section. These systems operate by using a phase-transition coil chamber in which a measured quantity of raw material is dematerialized in a manner similar to that of a standard transporter.
Instead of using a molecular imaging scanner to determine the patterns of the raw stock, however, a quantum geometry transformational matrix field is used to modify the matter stream to conform to a digitally stored molecular pattern matrix. The matter stream is then routed through a network of waveguide conduits that direct the signal to a replicator terminal at which the desired article is materialized within another phase transition chamber.
Okay then, the next election will happen when the next election is called.
Let me know if I used any words that are too big for you.
The likely scenario is that, immediately upon Parliament resuming next month, the Liberals will immediately lose a confidence vote, triggering a snap election. The opposition parties have all stated that they will initiate a confidence vote at the earliest opportunity.
In the unlikely event that doesn't happen, I imagine JT would remain on as PM until the mandatory election this fall. Were he to step down, he would probably appoint a sitting MP as interim PM.
As a fun(?) aside, Canada has had two PMs who served while members of the (unelected) Senate, and MacKenzie King and John Turner both briefly governed without a ministerial seat.
TrekMovie has a brief piece summarizing part of an SFX cover feature on "Section 31," mostly focusing on the changes the project went through on the journey from series to movie.
That got me wondering what else was in the SFX feature, and eventually I remembered that I have a library card, which I can use to access magazines. So...I did that, and here's a summary of what I learned.
The centrepiece of the feature is an interview with Olatunde Osunsanmi, the director. He spends some time talking about the nuts and bolts of "Star Trek City," which is what they call the Toronto production offices. He talks about the benefits of being able to redress existing sets, including repurposing the Federation HQ set from Discovery to be the "Section 31 outpost safe house." On the topic of being economical, he also mentions how "Section 31" has been a unique experience, as they didn't have to build sets for future use - if their plan for a given scene didn't require a full set, they could safely choose not to build that fourth wall, or incorporate lighting that they wouldn't need for this specific movie.
As TrekMovie reported, he talked about the evolution from series to film. He estimates that there have been seven iterations of the project, including a couple of versions of the series, some subsequent pilot scripts, and then a couple of versions of the movie that they eventually made. He says:
"I would say the only two things that are the same from the original series pilot to the movie that we've got now is that there is a character named Alok and Philippa Georgiou."
He says that the movie's writer, Craig Sweeny, has been involved since the entire process.
Osunsanmi goes into a surprising amount of detail about what he calls the "phase fight," which the article describes as "an extended Dune-esque battle that's spread across sets and involves moving though walls." This sequence reportedly goes through at least seven different sets.
He also mentions the movie's final fight, which he describes as having an emotional component:
"But that fight went through probably the most iterations of different choreography and character beats that I've ever been through, because for me, and particularly for Michelle Yeoh, every fight, every action sequence, is actually an extension of the character."
He goes on to describe the degree to which Yeoh has been involved throughout the project's development, including giving character notes and developing the fight choreography.
The movie gives a "glimpse" into the origins of the Emperor, and Osunsanmi has high praise for Miku Martineau, who plays young Georgiou.
Finally, he acknowledges that if successful, "Section 31" could open the doors to future streaming movies:
"If the audience - the fans - they love it, the sky's the limit with what we can do. The wonderful thing about what Craig Sweeny and Alex Kurtzman have done here is similar to what they did on Discovery, in which we've created a foundation by which other things can grow out of."
"I think I might get into a bit of trouble if I expand upon that.
There are also brief interviews with Robert Kazinsky, who plays Zeph (the guy in the mech suit), and Sam Richardson, who plays Quasi (the Chameloid).
Robert Kazinsky
I'm terrified of how it's going to be received, because it's not the Trek people want. The Trek that people want, the Trek that we all want, is just 1,000 more episodes of TNG. Everyone's always furious that they're not getting more TNG, whilst at the same time, when TNG came out, everybody hated it...so for you to tell me that it still feels like Trek whilst being a completely different flavour of Trek, that encourages me. In 10 years time, we'll look back and we'll love every single one of these Treks.
He also talks at length about the backstory he and Craig Sweeny came up with for Zeph (which, from the sounds of things, doesn't actually factor in to the movie). The idea is that he used to work with Section 31, and as an engineer and biomechanist, he experimented on himself until he destroyed his own spinal column, and he now spends all of his time in the mech suit to remain mobile.
It sounds like the suit itself was a fairly miserable, smelly experience to film in, and the various components of it would occasionally break. He jokes that if there's a sequel, maybe he can play Zeph's twin brother Jeff, who doesn't have to wear it.
He also says this, which I found interesting:
Seeing Klingons and Andorians, it's everything that you want it to be, with people who exceed every aspect that you want them to exceed.
We'll have to see what these Klingons look like...
He also says that this is his dream job, and he'd do it for free (but he doesn't want Kurtzman to hold him to that).
Lastly, he says that he considers Zeph to be the heart of the team:
mostly because he's just innocent and full of love. He just loves his team, and doing what he's doing. He's really happy to just be bouncing around, smashing stuff. He just really enjoys it. He's never in a bad mood. He's painfully optimistic.
Sam Richardson
Most importantly, Richardson has decided that Quasi has modeled his appearance on the most handsom man in Federation history, from 2024...Sam Richardson.
Quasi is in the second-in-command role on the team, and out of the main characters is the least trusting of Georgiou.
Richardson talks a little bit about working out the characters' motivations, as they are "pointing in the direction of ultimate good, but our ways are a little bit more circumvent-y," which gave them some space to figure out what, exactly, that meant for everyone.
He also mentions that not everyone makes it out of the movie alive, which is perhaps unsurprising. He would love to come back to do more, "if Quasi is around at the end of this one."
Those are the things that jumped out at me, but there's more to the feature than just that - I encourage you to check out the magazine if you're able, and at the very least, support your local library!
I'm pretty sure the portion of the Act that site refers to was repealed in 2017.
Canadian citizens who (are alleged to) have committed treason should be tried under to Canadian law, and there's no reason to invent loopholes to avoid having to put someone on trial.