Prouvaire

Movies:

• Rebel Moon. If you gave an AI the prompt: "A Star Wars movie written and directed by Zack Snyder but with all Star Wars copyrighted material disguised" this is what you'd get. I know that's exactly what the movie was, minus the written by AI bit (though I wonder), but it felt almost like a parody of itself.
• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Mediocre, except for Patrick Wilson who elevated every soggy line he was given to read. They desperately wanted to recreate the Thor/Loki dynamic to the point where I thought in one scene I actually heard Aquaman call his brother "Loki".
• One Life. Schindler's List if Schindler's List focused more on the red tape needed to rescue people from the Nazis, and Oskar's twilight years. Kidding aside, a decent movie, but more on the "worthy" end of the spectrum than the entertaining.
• Poor Things. The best movie I've seen this year. May still be true 51 weeks from now.

TV:

• For All Mankind. I enjoyed the "retro" early seasons more, but it's still a very watchable show, and one I still consider to be a Star Trek prequel if I squint and look at it slightly sideways. They certainly seem to be heading towards a Fundamental Declarations of the Martian colonies scenario this season. One of the few shows I'm watching week-by-week instead of saving up and bingeing.
• A Murder at the End of the World. Well acted, somewhat slow moving murder mystery. Unfortunately I guessed the identity of the killer after two episodes, and thought both that, and a certain revelation about one of the characters, were overused tropes in the early 2020s.
• Bodies. Decent crime mini series set across four time periods. I thought the more modern settings and characters were more interesting than the oldey timey (wimey) ones, but the show managed to bring all four storylines together in a pretty satisfying way.
• Silo. Halfway through. Pretty good, but maybe not as good as I heard it was.

As others have pointed out, Foundation isn't a particularly faithful adaptation of Asimov's stories, but there good things in it. It might be more accurately titled Foundation and Empire IMO, because it focuses as much on the Empire side of the story as the Foundation. The first season was lopsided. The Empire plotline was compelling, the Foundation ones were... not. Haven't watched the second season yet, but apparently it's more consistent.

For All Mankind is the Star Trek prequel we should have had. Co-created by Ron Moore (Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica), the show has a bunch of Trek alumni working behind the scenes. It features human drama (and sometimes melodrama), geopolitical diplomacy, sweeping cultural change and scientific adventure against the backdrop of a multi generational future history, starting with the first moon landing.

Fedilab is a Fediverse client for (according to the website) Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed, Pleroma, GNU Social and Friendica. You can also follow kbin users (and, I assume lemmy ones as well, though I haven't tried). The app will allow you to manage several accounts on Mastodon, Peertube and Pleroma instances.

You can block content by keywords or phrases (either hiding them with a warning or hiding them completely) but I don't know if you can bulk upload keywords. (You can add several keywords/phrases at a time manually.)

Unfortunately (for you) the app is currently only available on Android.

I can't imagine US audiences taking kindly to a movie with "Messiah" in the title, so imagine that it'll be called Dune: Part 3.

That Bob Justman memo reminded me how much fun they had making TOS (as well as working long and hard of course). Perhaps my favourite is the memo chain Justman started about Vulcan proper names.

Re fixing mistakes: I guess I don't have a problem with it as long as the mistakes are trivial, are clearly errors, and the original version remains available. What constitutes a "trivial error" of course can be up for debate. Correcting a background audio cue - sure, why not? Changing early TOS references of "Vulcanians" to "Vulcans" - definitely not.

I honestly believe Captain Marvel was the start of the downfall of Marvel. Not because of the cast, sex, or anything along those lines. I believe they over did the character. They made her way to damn strong which made all the other characters pointless. Remember when a literal god, the most advanced mech, and the super soldier with all the stats struggled with Thanos? Then Cpt Marvel swoops in destroys a couple of ships and takes one on the chin like nothing, that was the moment.

I don't understand this criticism at all.

First of all, it was Wanda who had Thanos almost beaten, which is why he had his ship fire on the ground. So Wanda presented a greater threat to him than Captain Marvel did; so great a threat that he was willing to sacrifice his entire army to try to take her out. I think it was Feige who said, around the time of Endgame or maybe shortly thereafter, that Wanda was the most powerful character in the MCU. But people don't criticise Wanda for being overpowered and making all the other characters pointless.

Second of all, while Danvers did take down one ship (not two, not that it makes a difference), they could have found ways for several other characters to do the same (eg Doctor Strange via illusions, Wanda or Thor through sheer power, Iron Man through nanotech magic) - they just wanted Captain Marvel to make a big entrance because she had been teased at the end of Infinity War (and then also in her own movie prior to Endgame), and we hadn't really seen her manifest her full power earlier in Endgame.

But the whole point of that her late intervention in the final fight was that Captain Marvel was NOT the overpowered deus ex machina that many fans falsely deride her to be. Because in a one-on-one fight with Thanos, Thanos disposes of her easily - they trade a few punches, he throws her into the ground. She comes back, and he punches her out of frame and out of the film (until the epilogue). The final fight came down to Captain America, Thor and of course Iron Man, which it was always going to - those being the three keystone Avengers of the MCU.

That's also why all the founding members of the Avengers went unsnapped at the end of Infinity War. Markus and McFeely and the Russos knew they were making an Avengers movie, not a Captain Marvel movie. Markus and McFeely knew that fans would have felt rightfully betrayed if a character, who had only been introduced to the MCU a year or so before, had swooped in and saved the day after a decade-long build up. So they made sure she didn't. But more fool them - they still cop the same criticism.

And I say all this as someone who thinks that both Captain Marvel movies (and most of Larson's performances in the MCU) have been decidedly mediocre, though not for any reasons related to her power level.

Spock.

The why should be obvious, but this video goes some way to explaining it.

I'm pretty sure I encountered "City on the Edge of Forever" through James Blish's short story adaptation before I saw the actual episode *cough cough* years ago, because Edith's speech as televised:

One day soon... man is going to be able to harness incredible energies, maybe even the atom. Energies that could ultimately hurl us to other worlds in... in some sort of spaceship.

has always struck me as being incredibly blunt in comparison to what appeared in the short story version. Blish didn't work off the final shooting scripts but earlier revisions, so I assume Edith's "astronauts on some sort of... star trek"-like predictions must have been inserted by Roddenberry or maybe Fontana.

While some of the poetry and elegance may have been taken out of Ellison's script (along with other, more justifiable, changes), there's no denying that "City" is an absolute classic, and one of the few instances of Trek doing romance well.

Great news! The Matt Jefferies Enterprise is my second-favourite incarnation of the Enterprise (after the TMP refit), although I prefer the post-pilot version with the balls at the back of the nacelles rather than the grilles.

But I don't have a problem with it. I'm actually very glad the model has been found cause it's an absolutely iconic item, and hope it's on its way to Rod Roddenberry.

No it wasn’t, it was genes and it sat on his desk before being loaned out to the studio

It was loaned out in the run-up to Star Trek The Motion Picture. It was not loaned to the studio at the time of production of the original series. I'm talking about the ownership of the model back in 1964, not 1978/79.

No the model was made before any production, again documented and linked for source.

Filming of the first scene of "The Cage" took place on 24 or 27 November 1964 (accounts vary).

The 3-foot model was commissioned from Richard Datin on 4 November 1964. He received the blueprints on 7 or 8 November 1964. An in-progress version was presented to Roddenberry on 15 November 1964, with Roddenberry apparently requesting a number of changes, ie "more detail". The model was delivered to Roddenberry on 14 December 1964 while "The Cage" was being filmed in Culver City.

Therefore the model was made during production, not before.

Source for most of these dates: http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/shaw/1701-33-inch.html

And even if the model was made before production of "The Cage" started, it doesn't negate my point, which is that the model would almost certainly have been paid for, and therefore owned, by Desilu or Norway as it was clearly a production/pre-production expense. It was used consistently throughout the run of the show, and was even modified to more closely resemble the 11-foot model. I find it inconceivable that Roddenberry would have paid for it out of his own, personal, pocket.

Again it’s documented, you’re simply making things up.

I'm not making things up, I'm speculating based on what I know of business and Roddenberry himself. Roddenberry was known to appropriate items that were owned by the studio for his personal benefit, eg when he took film clippings after the show was cancelled and sold them through his private business Lincoln Enterprises.

Roddenberry merely stating "I've owned it since the Desilu days" in a letter doesn't necessarily make it so. Note I'm not claiming he didn't own it, I'm raising it as an academic possibility. And, as I said, I have no problems at all with the model going back to the Roddenberry family once it's been recovered.