Let's not expect miracles...

It's probably worth noting that this is what he had to say about fiction in general, and Star Trek in particular, a few years ago:

I dislike social commentary. Like… I really hate it. When I’m reading a book, I just want to be entertained, not preached at by the author. Plus, it ruins the wonder of the story if I know the author has a political or social axe to grind. I no longer speculate about all possible outcomes of the story because I know for a fact that the universe of that book will conspire to ensure that the author’s political agenda is validated. I hate that.

Yeah, I didn't really like the political message aspects of those stories [Stranger in a Strange Land, Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale]. Not that I disagreed with the political point. Just that I didn't like the political points being there at all. Now, those writers are so good they make compelling and addictive stories despite the political messaging. But that's often not the case with other stories and other authors.

You're not mis-reading me, though. I deeply dislike social commentary. For instance, as a lifelong Star Trek fan, it's always bothered me that there is a presumed "responsibility" within Star Trek shows to talk about social issues. I just want to watch Romulans and the Federation shoot at each other.

I would argue that very little good science fiction tries to have nothing to say about humanity or the human condition.

I'll take it a step further and say it's impossible for any fiction, let alone sci-fi.

If you're writing a story, you have something to say, and to claim otherwise is either a cover-up or profound ignorance of your own work.

From her publicity blitz for the episode, I don't think she's too excited to go through the prosthetics process again.

Hell, LaGuardia has ASDE-X installed. The fire truck in question did not have a transponder, rending a significant portion of the system pretty useless in this case.

It's unclear whether any of the ground vehicles at LaGuardia are equipped with the transponders, or at least it was unclear the last I heard.

I think Shatner is complicated because (a) he's 95 years old, and can't be expected to be fully "in touch," and (b) he has definitely had some questionable people handling his social media over the years.

+24 hours. But you can still be excited!

Up to 10 dead, including the suspect, now.

Oh cool, GFR has finally gone mask-off.

This has always been the case, but I'm going to take this opportunity to state that links to that site are not allowed here, and will be removed on sight.

Elbows way, way down.

I think this is an extremely lousy headline, but the content is good.

Firstly, the headline slightly misquotes what Matalas actually said (emphasis added):

“We wrote nine episodes at one point and the network was like, ‘No, we don’t really understand this, it’s a bit too sci-fi, it’s a bit too in-Star Trek.’”

I think a story being a little too "inside baseball" and reliant on stuff from decades ago is a perfectly valid note, especially when we're talking about ideas like this:

The idea was that Guinan’s bar was presented as a normal bar in Los Angeles, but if you knew the right thing to do, you could go into the back through the telephone phone booth and that was Rick’s Café and it was a stopping point for all these different species that were actually there on Earth with a ‘Do not interfere’ thing happening.

The stuff about COVID messing with the writing and shooting schedule is understandable, and created problems that can be seen in many TV shows filmed around that time. All the same, it makes me wish they had decompressed the schedule and not rushed through things as much as they did.

The comments about there being a lot of different ideas in season two are interesting, since I think she overall series' biggest flaw is that it crammed a lot of ideas, many of which I like quite a bit, into only 30 episodes, with few (none?) of them being fully explored.

And regarding the Jurati Borg...I don't know, I never found that confusing in the slightest. I think their intent came through just fine.

My expectations for this one were high, but I'm really impressed with how well they pulled it off. Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid did a great job of dialing their performances back just enough, and the SNW cast went just a little bit broader.