This morning CBS announced they will be holding a panel at WonderCon for Star Trek: Discovery. The event, being described as a “Visionaries panel” will be held on Saturday, March 24th. Scheduled panelists include: Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts (Executive Producers & Showrunners); Tamara Deverell (Production Designer); Gersha Phillips (Costume Designer); Mario Moreira (Props Master); Glenn Hetrick & James MacKinnon (Prosthetics & Special FX Makeup); Jeff Russo (Composer); and Jason Zimmerman (VFX Supervisor).
Here is the official description:
Over 50 years ago, the world was first introduced to what would quickly become a cultural phenomenon. It was a television series that inspired developments in science and technology, broke social barriers and transported viewers around the globe to new adventures and uncharted frontiers. Now, STAR TREK: DISCOVERY follows in the footsteps of those that came before as it seeks to tackle social issues, inspire the next generation of dreamers and doers and reflect on Roddenberry’s vision of a hope for tomorrow.
The panel will be moderated by actress Mary Chieffo (L’Rell) and is being held on Saturday, March 24th in Room North 200A at 3:00 PM.
IDW Star Trek panel
Another WonderCon event of interest to Trek fans is the “IDW Publishing and Star Trek Comics: Keep on Trekkin'” panel. Here is the official description:
Focusing on all the great Star Trek comics coming out from IDW, panelists include group editor Sarah Gaydos, writers Mike Johnson, Kirsten Beyer (also a staff writer on the Star Trek: Discovery show), Scott Tipton, and David Tipton, and Trek fan-favorite artist J. K. Woodward.
The IDW Trek panel will be held Saturday March 24, 2018 at 10:00am in Room 211.
Larry Nemecek Trekland panel
Also on Saturday is Larry ‘Dr. Trek’ Nemecek’s “TrekLand: Discovery Made Me Do It” panel.
Did the recent Star Trek: Discovery series make a Trek fan out of you, where you had not gone before? Or maybe it was the J. J. Abrams “Kelvin Timeline” movies that brought you aboard as a newbie? Larry “Dr. Trek” Nemecek (Portal47.net, The Trek Files, TNG Companion) wants to hear from you—and share your perspectives—in a world where “older” Trek fandom tends to be the only mainstream voice heard.
The Trekland panel will be held Saturday March 24, 2018 at 5:00pm in Room 209.
WonderCon 2018
WonderCon is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA from March 23rd to 25th. More info at comic-con.org.
DAMMIT this is one of the few times I wish I still lived in Long Beach. California gets EVERYTHING. /first world problem
There’s the irony, Marja–I live in San Diego, and could easily attend, but after DSC’s flame-out, following such a promising beginning, I just don’t have much interest.
Visionaries? Nick Meyer, Joe Menosky, and Bryan Fuller are visionaries, and they’re all long gone.
Oh michael micheal micheal. Check out th irony here… We get how much you are disappointed with discovery. But yet you continue to post on articles about discovery. Sigh.
And yes… Nick Meyer, Joe Menosky, and Bryan Fuller are no longer with discovery but they are still visionaries in the trek universe.
Captain R–
I hear you. In my defense I honestly can say that I don’t enjoy being a wet blanket any more than you like reading one, and that I at least try to keep the stated reasons for my dissasatisfaction on-point and substantive. Would you be willing to concede the possibility that I continue to post on this subject not because I love to bitch, but because I care?
Wait is Nic Meyer officially gone? I thought he was still some kind of consultant on the show? I guess since we haven’t heard a peep from the guy during the show’s entire run I shouldn’t be too shocked.
A slightly larger needle for me. Wondercon started just up the road from me in San Francisco. I went there when they had a huge Star Trek (2009) presence. It was since moved to Anaheim. Bummer.
Sorry Disco Trek – you forgot to “tackle” any “social issues.” You think you did, but you really didn’t. Oh, I know you wanted to proclaim that diversity is good and monocultures are bad, but you didn’t actually show that. You showed a strong monoculture, the Klingons, who were kept in check only by the efforts led by an evil racist from a parallel universe. Then you wanted us to forget all that. Next you showed the strong monoculture of the Klingons bringing the Federation to its knees; and then maybe you wanted to show the diversity of the Federation triumphing over that. But you forgot to do this too. You didn’t offer any philosophical debate – you offered a magical volcano bomb and showed us Klingons changing their minds without bothering to explain it.
What other social issues did you tackle? Genocide? You took the position that genocide is bad? Bravo, you brave show, you. You must’ve realized that you forgot to tackle social issues when you tacked on the line out of nowhere, “resource management is good, resource mismanagement is bad.” Hoo-rah. You patted yourself on the back endlessly for the diversity of your cast, but then you neglected to follow that up with substantive, thoughtful drama. In case you don’t realize, the cast of a show should be just the starting point of social relevance.
I like when the whiners complain about Disc being socially cognizant and then whine when they think they arent. Cant win with some people.
How about just enjoy the show..or dont.
How about you acknowledge that he has a good point? …or don’t.
He kinda doesn’t have a good point though. the problem is everyone is expecting The Drumhead, a ‘beat you over the head with a message’ show, and everything in here has been much more subtle commentaries on dualities and parallels. Yeah the cast is diverse, but the show explore much more about individual choices and the battles within each of us, between emotions and desires, what we are shown and what we discover.
Did the show deliver everything it promised, hell no (and the characters need more time to breathe between major events imho), but damn it has morality in spades under the surface. I’m just sorry so many people want it fed to them on a spoon.
Well morality is definitely part of the show although I disagree it doesn’t hit you over the head with it. MU Lorca gave an entire speech on why Federation values are wrong and delusional. Klingons come off like one dimensional Nazi villains and the Admirals are up to their usual turn the other way selves they been doing since TOS which Burnham and every other NON Admiral always question their orders.
I do think the one grey area was Burnham herself and how she was portrayed at the beginning of the season but that was dropped quickly because she never defended what she did or why she did it. They labled her a mutineer and she never disagreed with it even though she felt the reasons for it was just.
Its not that ‘clever’, far from it IMO.
TUP,
C’mon, you’re an intelligent guy. Do you honestly not see the difference between his substantive (if bitter) criticism and whining for its own sake?
Yeah Galt, has a great point, I don’t know why anyone would call it whining? In fact it was kind of the same issue I had with Beyond (which I also liked) and how originally I thought the villain would have a more philosophical stance on why he was doing what he was doing and in the end it just a guy who was angry he was no longer a soldier and upset Starfleet didn’t find him on a planet.
That was my same problem with these Klingons, they started a war with the Federation not because they thought the Federation was trying to do away with their culture but because someone thought the Empire became weak and needed something to bring them together again….so let’s start a war!
I don’t get all the money these people are paid to write these stories why they can’t come up with anything outside of a villain who just wants to take over the galaxy and not play with others?
Really, what’s with the inability of modern Trek to come up with reasonably complex motivations for its antagonists–something that current TV tends to excel at, even if the movie blockbusters don’t? Roddenberry and Coon always insisted, from the Horta on, that the villains had their own story to tell, and in the end, might turn out to not be villains at all. I should think they’d be appalled at this state of affairs.
Galt… why are you even here?
(yawn). Don’t you have some friends you can wax “philosophical” to? Ya know, rather than regularly post this contrarian nonsense to a fan site?
M. Galt–
Firing on all thrusters there IMO. Remember all those many months ago when the producers stated one of the questions the show would address would be how you make peace with those who aren’t interested in making peace with you? Turns out the answer is to place a bomb in the center of their planet and hand the controls over to an unreliable actor (actor in the political sense, Mary Chieffo’s performance being a constant delight). I mean, who knew?
Somehow, it wasn’t the moment of satori I was hoping for.
I think Mirror had some pretty cognizant points here, and didn’t detect any whining at all. Not everyone who posts here has to like the show; alternatively, as Trek fans I think we have the right and more importantly, the responsibility to speak up about how disappointed some of us are in it. I’m a fan of the franchise and have been since the mid-1970’s, and will tune in for season 2 of Disc simply due to that dedication. But for me, so far, the show has fallen flat in many an area. Hopefully it will get better.
If you give it a little bit of thought, the number of things to complain about with DSC can go up astronomically very quickly. Even my wife thought the size of some quarters on the ship were ridiculously huge, something that has often been an issue for me when filmmakers portray life in a space vessel.
And I think a lot of this kind of failing has to do with these makers not even having the kinds of discussions that should be basic prep on a show like this. The VFX-based ‘virtual mirrors’ used aboardship are cute — but why fly in the face of TOS and everything else, when there’s no NEED to do it? There’s also a decent argument for the idea that such niceties would simply not be included on a military or paramilitary vessel at all, just because while they are amenities, they are not basic ones.
So much of this is just change for no good reason at all, or else strictly to up the SF/future quotient … when the trappings are supposed to be background to the character drama. But when the character stuff is all overhyped melodrama, then you’d think that the show could at least rely on getting the background right (you can watch BLADE RUNNER or even the Soderberg SOLARIS for the visuals alone even if you don’t like the story) … and yet I find that just as obnoxious if not more so, from the excessive lens flares to the crappy look of ships in space that just got worse and worse as the season progressed.
If you go back to the first edition of WORLD OF STAR TREK, Gerrold seems to be very critical of TOS, but the critique is actually quite fair (I think the movie-era reworking of the book softpedals the critical aspect a lot, but haven’t read that since 1984 or so when it appeared), and very well-intended. If such a piece turned up in the comments section here, I’m sure it would be pounced on as an example of somebody who shouldn’t even be posting on a fan site, since the writer is just a ‘hater’ or whatever the current lingo embraces this week.
My seriously fierce denunciations of various TREK films, plus VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE and almost everything about the Craig-era Bond films are all pretty much in this same vein, not fury over them taking things down the wrong or even just a different path, but disappointment over them not bothering to try and get things right. If something is lightweight crap, you don’t necessarily trot out the big guns to demolish it — it isn’t worth the bother. But when it is TREK, you expect there to be SOMEthing going on up top — not saying I expect Tarkovsky level filmmaking, either — and when it comes up empty, they should expect something of a rage response, provided it is fairly articulate.
Well, the criticism of overly large crew quarters seems pretty selective to me, that being a feature of every Trek series and movie since TOS. (Trek VI being an exception, and I frankly hated the bunkrooms depicted there.) And the Discovery seems really oversized for its stated crew complement of around 160 people, so they can well-afford the room.
Again, we’re definitely of different minds on the show’s visuals (though I’m pretty lukewarm myself on the overly garish space FX). But in terms of production design and cinematography I think it’s light-years superior to any previous Trek production, including the films; I can totally understand why Jonathan Frakes had a hard time thinking of DSC as a prequel to TNG while working on those sets, though technically of course it is.
Otherwise, though, we’re in complete agreement. David Gerrold closed his “unfulfilled potential” chapter in TWOST by reminding his readers that as a writer and fan of the show himself his criticisms were made with love, and not distaste. So it is with those of us who have been–in my case, very reluctantly–put into the position of being very critical of a show that is the one-and-only official continuation of a franchise I’ve loved most of my life, and that I had such high hopes for.
Well let me correct you on one thing Kmart, Discovery is not a war ship its a science vessel and supposedly one of the most advance ones in the fleet so I can buy why everything is more advanced (but yes some of it is probably too advance) and why there are a lot of creature comforts, including why the quarters are probably bigger. But yes it does conflict with TOS which is why I come to my usual point it was a mistake to make a prequel to TOS but in general I’m fine with those differences personally. The virtual mirrors are cool but yes probably fits in another era.
I think it will get better Danpaine. First off its been pretty infamous most Trek shows have bad first seasons although for the record I didn’t have a huge problem with any of them outside of Enterprise and TNG and even those I didn’t feel was as bad as other fans.
My issue with Discovery is about the same, OK but faaaaar from great. But I believe the writers when they say they will evaluate what worked and what didn’t. For me, the Klingon war did NOT work so I hope they move away from that completely next season. I would be fine if we can avoid the Klingons entirely but I know that won’t happen because of Ash and L’reill (who I both liked).
But I do hope they work out the kinks more and actually EXPLORE next season. At least make some excuse to do it. Voyager was just about getting home and they explored all the time. Discovery doesn’t have to be TNG/TOS or Ent but try to do some of that and I believe they will.
I too hope for an improved second season. But I also have to be realistic: this is the same writing staff (less Nick Meyer and Joe Menosky) who sat in a writer’s room a year ago and agreed to, or at least went along with, the idea that Gabriel Lorca would turn out to be his own evil twin from the mirror universe.* Never mind that it wasn’t what the show’s co-creator had intended for the character, or that it amounted to a cheap stunt that had no resonance with the rest of the story at all, or that it put their actor in the unenviable position of having to mislead the press and the fans for months on end (that having worked out so well with Benedict Cumberbatch as “John Harrison”). Someone with sufficient pull wanted it to happen, and the rest made it so.
The sheer magnitude of that creative misjudgment alone–and there were quite a few others–leaves me skeptical about the prospects for season 2. I really, really hope that I’m wrong.
*Since Meyer famously walked away from what no doubt would have been a handsome payday to write and direct Trek III due to his disagreeing with Spock’s inevitable resurrection, I’m guessing that he was not a great fan of this decision. Maybe that’s why he apparently left to work on his own, still unknown Trek project.
Well said.
Galt,
One thing I WILL say and agree with you is I think what was changed when Fuller left was the treatment of the Klingons. When he was on board he originally hinted that the show would feel a lot more grey and that while the Klingons were the villains it sounded like we would understand their side of things and by the end of the season there would be more of a neutral stance on them.
But instead they are just treated it as full on villains with NO redeeming qualities. One of the reasons I thought the finale sucked so much was because it did end on the two trying to find any common agreement, it basically came down to the Klingons trying to wipe out the alpha quadrant and the only reason they didn’t is because Starfleet literally has a bomb to their head. Yes they played it like it was some big Federation value not to blow up an entire planet to win a war but that’s low hanging fruit, especially because I literally didn’t care IF they blew up the Klingons. They came off so badly I had no problems with killing all of them, which I suspect wasn’t really Fuller’s original plan with them.
Glad to see that in this thread (as of this writing) at least those who understand the difference between legitimate criticism and unthoughtful hating seen to be in the majority.
Woah here you are again. So you’re back? Did you watch the entire season? What were your thoughts on it?