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Moar Sci-Fi: Bring Back Star Trek!
Afternoon posts return with serious content tomorrow. To celebrate V-Confluence day, though, an impassioned plea to Paramount Pictures.
When Battlestar Galactica goes off the air this spring (its last half-season debuts on Friday), a strange thing will come to pass: setting aside the niche-appeal new Stargate franchise, for the first time in nearly a decade, primetime TV will be without a mass-appeal science fiction series. Battlestar is hardly the narrow nerds-only space opera that primetime staples like The Office & Big Bang Theory make it out to be: even the NY Times admits as much. It’s been a show of a caliber and societal importance not seen since Star Trek: the Next Generation. But, with the end of the last Star Trek series three years ago (Enterprise), Battlestar is the sole carrier of this torch.
Curiously, when Battlestar ends unreplaced, it will not be for lack of active talent or an interested viewership: the wide success of J.J. Abrams’ Lost and Moore & Eick’s Battlestar have proved both the existence of strong new writing talent, capable of tackling the grittier & more relevant edge of science fiction, and the potential for mass appeal & commercial success in such content. Rather, the problem lies in a failure of cooperation and trust. Paramount Pictures has guarded its rights to the Star Trek franchise with notorious zealotry, to the point of actively ignoring opportunities for profit. When Enterprise entered its fourth (and final) season in 2005, Battlestar‘s Moore & Eick offered to write and produce a new season – at no cost to Paramount, and with a waiver of any legal “ownership” of the produced content. Moore & Eick just wanted a crack at the genre: but Paramount rebuffed the team, and Enterprise died without a successor. For Paramount to ignore what is (by all accounts) a rising public interest in science fiction, and neglect a chance to fill the power vacuum left by Battlestar (and, to a lesser extent, Atlantis) is borderline negligent. Shareholders should be angry.
Fans may get a break in May, with the widely-anticipated, Abrams-produced Star Trek XI. Trek movies suffer from a notorious tendency to backfire horrifically – hopefully minimized in this case by Abrams’ equally strong penchant for genius – but a successful film would almost certainly ignite sequels, and could finally convince Paramount of the potential for successful televised Battlestar-style, pseudo-noir Star Trek. Any such renaissance would be a vindication of Roddenberry’s belief in the potential for science fiction’s moral authority, and a long-overdue ritornello to meaningful Star Trek, complete with its unique, skeptically optimistic perspective on humanity. Long shot, yes. But…
Clinton Confirmation Hearing … Not Exactly a Live Blog
(Reformatted for an easier read …)
Hillary Clinton is kicking major arse with her opening statement at her confirmation hearing. She’s talked about bottom-up approach to state building … expanding education, improving the plights of women and children … She’s mentioned the threat of failed states as havens for terrorists … She’s talked about working cooperatively and as a united front with the department of defense, crediting Robert Gates’ willingness to work with and perhaps defer to state department efforts.
Cynicism about the implacability of the mess that is post-W global relations aside, I’m pretty damn excited about Hill at State.
She just finished.
Now John Kerry is paying lip service to bipartisanship and explaining how the questions are going to be timed, etc.
Boring, but exciting, too.
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UPDATE 1: Kerry asked about Iran. Clinton is giving a very good answer that reflects Obama’s position … We’re going to give them a chance to engage in dialogue, but we are not afraid to utilize all tools available to us. This is better than the saber rattling she was doing at points during her campaign and before she announced her candidacy in an effort to look like Clint Eastwood.
UPDATE 2: Talking about day-to-day management, Clinton has talked about how important it is to start funding State, which has suffered while Defense gets hand-over-fist money. She mentioned the budget issue in her opening statement, too.
UPDATE 3: For a second, I thought Dick Lugar was going to ask Hill for her autograph. He looks that smitten.
UPDATE 4: Barbara Boxer is bringing up women’s rights, damn straight! No lesson is clearer: Want to improve a society? Want to strengthen a nation? Want to alleviate poverty? EMPOWER W-O-M-E-N. Period. (Pun intended!) “We cannot can have a free, prosperous, progressive world” if women are tortured, discriminated against, persecuted … Sex slavery, wage slavery … “A slavery of girls and women.” Sounds like State is going to have a voice on this issue.
UPDATE 5: Sen. Voinovich (R-OH) just alluded to Susan Rice’s strong, er, personality (???), mentioning he wants Hill to make sure she and Rice are on the same page, since Rice is going to be “over there” at the U.N. “The last things we want to hear is that we have a conflict.” You know how things go when the girls get together. Clinton let the comment slide. Now she is addressing Russia’s efforts to throw its weight around, trying to set up a natural-gas cartel, a la OPEC. To his credit, Voinovich is talking about State’s role in moving us towards energy independence and building multilateral agreements.
UPDATE 6: Clinton is talking about how State responsibilities have been outsourced to contractors. She doesn’t like it. (I don’t either.)
UPDATE 7: Lisa Murkowski is bringing up Alaska’s role in energy and environmental policy. Looks like Law of the Seas Treaty is going to be getting attention. Clinton has mentioned U.S. involvement in treaties, that we need to start leading their crafting and enforcement. What a novel concept, considering the last eight years of lone-cowboyism.
UPDATE 8: Actually, this isn’t an update except to say it’s been real … but a diaper needs changing STAT and it’s time for a little guy to have lunch. I suppose this turned out to be a live blog after all. Clinton is sailing through this hearing, partly because she has a very friendly audience, but also because I believe she knows her stuff.
Anyone Else Choking on Quicksand?
I ask only because I’m watching my home’s value freefall and paying 50% or more for things like, oh, prescriptions and, yes, pizza crust. (The cost of pizza dough from Adams Fairacre Farms has increased 100% over the last 18 months!) Don’t misinterpret my feeble attempt at alliterative humor as flippancy.
After reading the Congressional Oversight Panel‘s [COP] second report to Congress regarding Treasury’s administration of TARP funds, I can tell you Treasury (1) still doesn’t give a whit about stabilizing the housing market, (2) remains wholly convinced capitalization of banks will lead us to salvation, and (3) either has no guiding philosophy to address the financial crisis through TARP or holds so much contempt for the American public, it would not demean itself to share this tidbit of information with us.
In its first report, COP asked Treasury to answer 45 questions in 10 general areas related to its TARP mandate. Treasury’s answers are amazing, like its description of its strategy to stabilize financial markets:
- What is Treasury’s vision of the problem? No response.
- What is Treasury’s overall strategy? Reiteration of general soundbite promises to stabilize financial markets, prevent avoidable foreclosures, and protect the taxpayer.
- What does Treasury think the central causes of the financial crisis are and how does its overall strategy for using its authority and taxpayer funds address those causes? No response.
Here are some of Treasury’s views regarding using TARP to stabilize the housing market:
- What steps has Treasury taken to reduce foreclosures? Identification of private-industry programs or voluntary government programs (that went bust because lenders did not voluntarily participate), almost entirely begun prior to passage of TARP legislation.
- Why has Treasury not generally required financial institutions to engage in specific mortgage foreclosure mitigation plans as a condition of receiving taxpayer funds? No response.
- Should Treasury be considering others models and more innovative uses of its new authority under the Act to avoid unnecessary foreclosures? No response.
Yikes! and more Yikes! after the jump
