I’ve never seen a company who’s advertising goes so far the wrong way. It makes me want to cancel it and I don’t even subscribe.

They don’t even have enough content to fill a billboard, let alone a whole streaming service.

My guess is Trekkie’s would

People can still sit through a whole movie??

He’s not wrong that the reader/viewer can take what they will from a work and translate it through their own lens… but come on, that is some neutron-star density if you can’t read the deliberate social commentary in Star Trek. Roddenberry himself has spoken about it.

It makes me pretty convinced that person, and those who share his views, are people who feel called-out or attacked on some level by whatever social issues are being highlighted, or feel insecure that they don’t “get it.”

There is a really wild segment of the human population who seem totally incapable of working out abstract ideas like ethics and values on their own and rely on systems like government or religion or unfortunately, content creators to guide them. This is a bigger problem than we realize and we take for granted that just because we all grew up watching the Ninja Turtles beat Shredder that we can all discern that “good is better than bad.” Not everyone gets that, and this is everyone’s problem.

Narnia and Dune are so up-front about their messages that after a couple books it stops being subtext and just becomes text, so they’re technically correct there.

Scientists predict that by the year 2120, the entire solar system will be nothing but cop shows.

About the only time they notice “activism”, too.

They can have activism like Project 2025 or the decades-long effort to overturn Roe, and none of that counts as “activism”.

The first Red Angel was Burnham’s mom. The second Red Angel was Burnham, because of-fucking-course it was.

They would like the idea of permanently unclothed women though. Those on the younger side especially.

The Ferengi actually know how to run a functioning economy.

Obligatory Quark rant

Star Trek: The Final Front Ear

Harlan also wanted the episode “City on the Edge of Forever” to be WAY darker but that was not the kind of universe Gene was making. Harlan was a difficult guy to work with.

Star Trek would have been very different under Harlan Ellison.

So we went to the commissary and shoved in around the Writers’ Table.

What I did not know was that the Writers’ Table was right behind the Producers’ Banquette. That was my first big mistake. As it turned out, it was also my last big mistake.

Oh, what fun, sitting there with intellectual companions, cutting up touches and laughing at the drolleries! Born again: the Algonquin round table. Wit beyond compare. And, naturally, as the youngest member of the group, striving to make my mark as worthy of their camaraderie, their respect, I suggested a droll, witty lunchtime conceit . . .

Two things you must know. First, I do a terrific Mickey Mouse imitation. Absolutely phonographically perfect. If the publishers of this book had the money, they ought to bind in a record, one of those little plastic jobbies, so you could hear my spectacular Mickey imitation. When I tell this anecdote in person, it really enhances a lot. But just pretend you can hear it, okay?

The second thing you need to know is that the Producers’ Banquette had filled up with Roy Disney and the other heads of the studio, behind me; a fact of which I was unaware; a fact no one bothered to impart.

At the top of my voice I suggested, “Hey, listen, what a kick! Why don’t we do a porn Disney flick?”

Everyone smiled. “It’ll be terrific,” I said. Loudly. “I mean, everyone knows, for instance, that Tinker Bell does it . . . what they don’t know is how she Does It.” They all looked at me expectantly. “She flies up the head of the penis and flaps her wings like crazy,” I said, proud as hell of myself at this bit of fantasy. Everyone chuckled.

I went on, oblivious to the sudden hush all around me in the commissary. “I’ll be Mickey, and I’ll be the director; John, you do a good Donald, so you can be the male porn lead, sort of a duck-style Harry Reems; Mary, you can be Minnie, the female lead; and Albert, you can be Goofy . . . and Goofy, of course, is the producer.”

Their smiles were frozen; the way the smiles of bit players get frozen when they see the monster creeping up behind the hero in a horror flick.

“Hey, gang!” I squeaked in my terrifically accurate Mickey voice. “Everybody ready to shoot the ultimate Disney flick? The film that rips the lid off the goody two-shoes hypocrisy that lies sweltering beneath the surface of G-rated true-life adventures? Okay, you guys, let’s get that hand-held Arriflex right down there between Minnie’s legs! I wanna see closeups of quivering labia!”

A silence as deep as that at the bottom of the Cayman Trench.

I went on, oblivious, carried along by my enthusiasm. In Donald’s quack I said, “Goddam sonofabitch! Pluto, get outta there, you’re steaming up the lens!”

As Goofy, in the dumbest voice possible, I said, “Yuck, yuck, yuck . . . hey, fellahs, I’m a highly-paid, extremely-inept producer person . . . c’n I play, too?”

As Mickey: “Fuck off, Goofy, fuck off! Get those Seven Dwarfs in here . . . I don’t care ff they don’t wanna gang-bang a mouse, tell 'em they’re under contract . . . and fer chrissakes, Minnie, will you take off those damned shoes?!”

The meal came. Everyone addressed their plates like inmates of the Gulag Archipelago. When lunch was over, everyone vanished very quickly. I was confused, but felt good. What a nice little shtick I’d invented. Wished they’d joined in. Oh well.

Went back to my office. Noticed first that my name had been whited-out in the parking slot. Upstairs, the secretary and her paperback were gone. On my desk: twelve sharpened #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencils and a pink slip.

I had been fired after working for the Disney empire for a total of four hours, including lunch.

The lessons here cannot be avoided.

Big business is humorless.

And . . .

At Disney, nobody fucks with The Mouse.

Now that would be a hell of a timeline.

… dear god.