Lots of negativity in this thread, but that seems to be par for the course for any fandom. Personally I’m cautiously optimistic.

Skydance produced/co-produced (often partnering with Paramount) on a number of franchise movies, including Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Jack Reacher, Top Gun, GI Joe, Terminator, The Old Guard and Spy Kids. Some of their productions have been well-received (eg Mission Impossible, Top Gun Maverick) and others less so (Terminator Genysis and Dark Fate, although personally I quite liked Dark Fate). They’ve also produced smaller, critically acclaimed movies like True Grit, Annihilation and Air; as well as their share of dreck of course, like Geostorm.

What I think is clear though is that Skydance is primarily interested in big franchises, so if they were to acquire Paramount, I think more Star Trek movies would very likely be in the works which, as a fan, I’d be happy about. I know there’s an argument that Trek is best suited to TV, but some of the best Star Trek has been big screen Star Trek. And studios are more willing these days to have franchises run across both TV and film concurrently (MCU, DC, Star Wars), granted with mixed success.

Re Larry Ellison’s involvement - my guess is that he’d be a silent partner, putting some of his personal fortune - rather than Oracle’s funds - to help out his son. I believe he did the same thing for his daughter, Megan Ellison, whose company Annapurna Pictures he helped fun and which went on to produce films like Her, Zero Dark Thirty, Phantom Thread and Books Smart (and the stage musical A Strange Loop). I doubt Larry Ellison will take a hands-on role in the management of Skydance/Paramount.

You’re not the only one who’s picked up on this:
https://www.primetimer.com/quickhits/the-west-wings-hartsfields-landing-has-never-made-any-damn-sense

If you watch the show (and I’ve watched it a lot) you can tell that Aaron Sorkin wasn’t writing to a detailed plan. I think a lot of his ongoing storylines grew organically (and were often turned in very late, which ultimately led to him being sacked from the show), which meant he sometimes repeated, or retconned, beats, or made other mistakes.

Hartsfield’s Landing was probably named after Hart’s Location, another New Hampshire town that has often votes at midnight. I recall reading a story that, because of the weather, of the three towns that usually do vote at midnight only Dixville did so this year.

edit: Hrrm. Turns out that’s what the linked CNN story actually says. Serves me right for not RTFA.

It means you weren’t the first person on your server to subscribe that community/magazine.

It would be nice to see people engaging with old posts when they stumble across a community and subscribe to it.

One barrier that will make this difficult is that instances only get a community’s feed from the moment they first subscribe to it, if that community’s home instance is on another server. So if you’re a user on - say - leminal.space and you’re the first person on that server to subscribe to - say - Musicals@kbin.social then you will not see any of that community’s old posts, only posts created (or boosted) after you’ve subscribed. This makes it difficult to engage with old content unless other people on your instance have been members of that community for much longer.

This is one of the issues with the fediverse model that doesn’t exist in a centralised model like reddit. And - sadly - smaller, niche communities are the ones most likely to be affected by this limitation, because they’re the ones least likely to be federated to a large number of instances. It makes smaller, less active communities look even more inactive than they actually are.

Unused idea for the title sequence to Westworld.

If you enjoyed On the Basis of Sex you should check out RBG, the 2018 documentary about Ginsburg. Ginsburg also appears as a character in a couple of episodes of the fifth season of The Good Fight, played wonderfully by Elaine May.

I think I preferred the early Wes Anderson, before he went full Anderson. Check out Rushmore and (what I think is his best movie) The Royal Tenenbaums.

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’m a younger user of lemmy in the sense that I’ve only been a Fediverse user for less than a year. 😇

Starcraft (1 and 2). I suck. Suck in the “had trouble finishing the campaign on Normal, couldn’t get out of Bronze league” sense of suck.

But I love it. It’s my favourite video game, though these days I only watch it rather than play it, for reasons of see above.

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.

The first instance of “shit” on American network television (ie not HBO etc) that I can recall was on Chicago Hope. I think it was Adam Arkin who was able to say “shit happens” in one episode. There was a bit of publicity about it at the time.

Chicago Hope also managed to show a female breast, sort of. There was an episode where a woman had one of her breasts reconstructed, and they showed the result. I assume it wasn’t an actual breast that was aired, but a lifelike replica. Either that, or they got away with showing a real boob by pretending it was a fake one in the story.

Mine’s more like slash fiction.

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.

@CCMan1701A has a point. The model was built for production purposes, so it would have almost certainly been paid for - and therefore owned - by either by Desilu Studios or Norway Corporation (aka Norway Productions) depending on how the accounting was set up back in 1964. So unless Desilu/Norway sold or gifted the model to Roddenberry at some point, ie formally passed title to him, technically it would still be the property of the original corporate owner.

What I think quite possible though is that after TOS was cancelled Roddenberry took possession of a bunch of production assets nobody ever thought would have any value. Star Trek, after all, was a failed show. IIRC it was known that he used to do stuff like that, eg selling off merchandise to fans that - technically - he didn’t own. It’s just that nobody really cared too much back then.

Now as it so happens, Norway was actually Roddenberry’s production company, but technically that doesn’t matter, as there’s a legal distinction between a corporation you own on the one hand, and you as an individual on the other. That’s the whole purpose of setting up businesses as separate legal entities. So even if the model was originally purchased by and owned by Norway (as opposed to Desilu, which was sold to Paramount during the show’s run) then Norway (Roddenberry’s company) would still have needed to pass ownership to Gene Roddenberry the individual (via a gift or sale) in order for Majel Roddenberry’s statement that “it was Gene’s” to be strictly true. Of course, that would have been a cinch to do: Roddenberry, as owner/executive of Norway, simply sells or gives the model to Roddenberry the individual.

It’s possible that this happened, ie that Desilu or Norway sold or gifted the model to Roddenberry, but it’s also possible (especially if the model was owned by Desilu/Paramount) that he merely ended up with it, and that nobody questioned his legal right to it in the years since.

Personally, regardless of whether technically (ie from a legal or accounting perspective) Roddenberry did or did not own the model, I fully understand that Rod Roddenberry would be interested in recovering this seminal piece of Star Trek memorabilia, and I wouldn’t have any issues if it stayed in the Roddenberry family or was gifted to an institution like the Smithsonian.