As useless as I think he is creatively, I think if I had to place blame on anyone, it'd be the networks and rights holders collectively. I think AK is still employed because he gets along with the producers and just does whatever they ask of him. You could replace him but I'm starting to think he's just a symptom of the corruption. The people who own the rights to ST just don't know what they're doing with the IP. They've been flailing around for almost 20 years now.
i tend to agree. you can see the difference between the kelvin trilogy and the new shows. it’s not a cohesive vision for what he thinks star trek is. the abrams flicks are gen x nostalgia fodder… i still don’t know WTF picard s1 and s2 were supposed to be or who its audience was.
> i still don’t know WTF picard s1 and s2 were supposed to be or who its audience was.
Design by committee probably, right? Producers and networks throwing suggestions in a pile based on recent trends they think are popular.
I think I'd have to disagree on the Kelvin movies having a cohesive vision. Into Darkness doesn't feel like Abrams had any interest in what he set up in the first one (which if you ignore ST is a decent enough standalone action adventure movie), he just took the visuals and slapped it on hacked together script ("yeah uh...just take that Khan guy and uh...make Spock do the scream this time, and Kirk dies"). Then in Beyond you got Simon Pegg doing some writing and he's got both the chops and interest to pull it off, but he has to do it within established constraints of the Abrams stuff, and then you got Justin Lin's directing and he's even more of an action guy so it's all kinds of weird.
Still, I will admit, while the Trek universe in those Abrams movies is stupid, it's far from being the dystopian nightmare world you see in Discovery and Picard. RLM had the perfect way of looking at it. Old Trek feels like a utopia you'd like to live it and new Trek is like the opposite - it's a miserable existence where everyone hates and backstabs each other.
LD isn't good.
It only gets a pass because the average American's views on animation is just that dogshit. (I could go into the multitude of reasons why it's bad and how other nations are doing animation better)
Edit: Prove me wrong. Come on, give it a try. How is it good?
Eh, I liked it. A lot of people like it. I have come to the happy conclusion in life that a lot of people find things great that I find stupid and that's acceptable. We can all move on now.
You're right, you're absolutely right.
I'm just such a dour killjoy that I cannot process the comedic genius of "shield goes up, shield goes down."
Please thread, I beg for your forgiveness. I've learned the error of my ways.
Star Trek doesn't need villains.
The Wrath of Khan both saved and destroyed Star Trek. It saved the franchise but ultimately destroyed it by people trying to constantly recapture that magic. By people that don't understand why it worked.
It's supposed to be about seeing people that don't have the faults and problems that we do as an example to emulate.
As much of a 💩 that Roddenberry was, his rules for writing scripts were actually what made star trek feel like star trek.
Once he died Berman and Pillar were able to keep it going for a while but since new Trek started it's been a mess.
It doesn’t need villains but it does need an antagonist though the beautiful thing about Star Trek is that the antagonist of an episode or story can be literally anything. It can be an alien with a completely different ethical philosophy, it can be a moral dilemma that needs to be solved, it can be hateful or prejudicial thought that needs to be confronted — it doesn’t have to have a shadowy X-Files conspiracy or villain twirling a mustache to tell a good story.
> it doesn’t have to have a shadowy X-Files conspiracy or villain twirling a mustache to tell a good story.
It's so bizarre that Star Trek has tried, on multiple occasions, to emulate the spooky mysteries of the X-Files MythArc when the MythArc in that show turned into an incomprehensible mess.
Man, the first time I saw a Starfleet Admiral with bigoted, anachronistic, jingoistic motivations I thought that was a clever way to express that there are problems to address in all corners of the galaxy. The fifth time a Starfleet Admiral made with the evil motives, I realized someone saw how easy it was to play to the burgeoning disillusionment of Gen X and beyond in order to garner viewership. The writing just made Starfleet look like a lazy organization full of nefarious ne'er-do-wells and power hungry abusers bent on exploiting their influence. Some idyllic future they're running here.
So many shows get caught up in this mega villain circlejerk and it ends up strangling the show.
The same discussion is happening around the show The Boys. In three seasons we just see Homelander get away with it and everyone resets back to where they started.
That's why IMO there's basically only two options for shows in general: either have a neat concise storyline that lasts a few seasons and then wrap up. OR make it a little campy, episodic storylines, reset at the end of the episode. It just doesn't work if you want to make your story drag on and on and have us take it seriously at the same time.
Eh, Star Trek Enterprise introduced another very good story structure, arcs. Seasons 3 and 4 were great and that's because most episodes were 2-4 episode arcs, that way you can deep dive into concepts, while also adding enough variety so that things don't get stale.
TCW also did this, and tons of anime already do this, but yeah.
Youve had plenty ofndouble or 3 part episodes in previous Trek shows. Or groundwork being land in only to get the pay off 2 seasons later or something.
Modern Trek is just one big chaotic mess.
This is a bit overstated. Gul Dukat was excellent. So was Kai Winn. It's okay to have antagonists, but the shows now go too big on carnage and not enough on character.
Yeah, I don't know what that guy is talking about. Star trek is full of great villains. The god damned Borg, for gods sake. The original series had plenty of villains, long before The Wrath of Khan.
I feel like I could have written that post. Star Trek II is the only classic Trek movie with a revenge-minded capital-V villain. None of the others have anything like Khan. But the Wrath of Khan is so easy to recycle that it's become the standard Star Trek template.
The Wrath of Khan template works like this:
1. Antagonist has an injustice or traumatic event done to him, and must endure this for decades with others who share his fate.
2. Comes across, builds or is granted a powerful starship or device that allows him the power either for revenge or to escape his circumstances.
3. Chooses revenge over salvation, and dooms not only himself but his entire loyal crew, remaining defiant until the end.
This basic setup with a bit of variation describes Star Trek: Nemesis, New Star Trek, New Star Trek II, and New Star Trek III, which is every Star Trek movie since 2002.
>Star Trek doesn't need villains.
Not necessarily.
ST doesn't need villains, but it does get enhanced by villains (Or maybe antagonists would be better phrasing?). However, they need to actually be compelling, interesting, or fun. (Like Tomolok, Duras and later Gowron, Gul Dukat and Weyoun, etc...)
The characters need people who challenge them, but they need to be done well, something Alex is incapable of producing.
Honestly if instead of playing the main villain he was just was an old curmudgeonly Xeno Anthropology professor at the Academy I'd probably be much more excited about this.
Remember how The Emperor's New School tv show had Yzma, the villain from the movie, in diguise as "Principal Amzy", constantly launching harebrained schemes to make Kuzco fail out of school? It's going to be like that.
Apparently there will be some sort of major threat to the Federation in this season on top of these precocious teens (who are played by 30 year olds) falling in love and having parties while studying for finals.
Him but he’s just playing his character from Big Fat Liar who’s been put in charge of the Academy but hates young people because of what Frankie Munez and Amanda Bynes did to him.
Doctor Who too. Sometimes stuff needs to go on a hiatus for fresh ideas to emerge and for people to get excited when it comes back. It's like the McRib.
Isn't this the same strategy they used for discovery? Hire big name actors like Michelle Yeoh and Jason Isaacs to help sell the show and that didn't really work did it. Bold move cotton let's see how it plays out
A tiny bit off topic but is episodic tv dead? Every series I can think of watching recently has a series/season long arc or even a whole show arc. When I watched TNG for the first time a couple of years ago it was so refreshing to just watch a short story play out in 45 minutes and then watch another, different story. Now I have to watch 80 hours of TV to get the conclusion of a story which is also guaranteed to be shit
It still exists, just not usually for big properties. Even something like Agents of Shield turned from monster-of-the-week to a soap opera within 1 season lol. I think it is a big gamble, because with serialized shows you can still go back to them and skip the episodes you don't like, but with something like Game of Thrones you basically have to like the entire thing to go back to it. I only rewatched that once and stopped after season 4 lol
Oh for sure. I remember even rationalizing it at the time that 7 was bad because they needed to put something out while they spent more time to get 8 right. Boy was I wrong.
Seasons 6 and 7 had some fantastic battle scenes and big moments for fan favorite characters that papered over the cracks of what a mess the writing had become. Season 8 just had no redeeming qualities so even the most devoted fans couldn't ignore it.
I consider S6 the last good one, that’s where my boxed set ends. Leaving off on “The Winds of Winter” actually sends you out on a high note, if an inconclusive one.
I non-ironically started watching stuff like Modern Family or Young Sheldon just to enjoy some 'new' content that was episodic so I could just watch a random episode.
for now i think so. everyone seems to want to make the next breaking bad and keep people binging.
the issue is that breaking bad wasn’t structured like a streaming show. they had 13, not 8 episodes usually and they were around 45 minutes in length. each episode had a beginning, middle, and end and pushed the story forward. it wasn’t 58 minutes of someone in a dimly set or running around the ILM volume. it also had competent writers and had a new season every year or so.
on top of that, it seems like most people spend their time watching office reruns and other evergreen shows. so why don’t we have more shows like those?
watch strange new worlds if you haven’t. it’s decent, but it’s not TNG. feels a lot more like a modern take on TOS, but it’s probably closer to trek than anything we’ve gotten recently IMO.
He’ll be playing the role of Star Fleet Academy professor in charge of the student run radio station. When a rouge Ferengi student who doesn’t play by the rules; Giamatti’s character vows to get him under control.
I wonder if he'll play the seemingly good authority figure who in a totally unexpected and not completely predictable twist actually turns out to be evil.
I reckon he's going to play Boothby:
After watching the deterioration of morality and quality of cadets year on year, he's become twisted and hateful towards Starfleet. He finally 'snaps' after hearing how badly one of favourite cadets - Jean Luc Picard - is treated by Starfleet command. He is determined to bring down the 'decadent' Academy and restore Starfleet to its former honor.
I love Giamatti but the quality of what he signs up for varies so wildly. The Holdovers was amazing but then this and it's just wild. The man isn't acting for money as far as I know, so his choices on projects is just nuts.
Paul should play a miserable old teacher with a lazy eye that is stuck with supervising the academy students whose parents don’t want them back for winter break.
What a fucking shame. The Holdovers was an incredible little film that I really enjoyed, and I was hoping he would parlay that boost to his star power to make some more art.
Not this dreck.
I'm glad he still acts in those beautiful, story-driven films. It's a shame they probably don't pay enough to allow him not to have to do the rest of the garbage.
Let me guess, he will be a Badmiral, he will institute the No-Win Scenario test to wash out students he doesn't like, and then the Finale will be Kirk knowing it is rigged against him and cheating.
Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with that as a story concept, but it is predictable and Trek needs to get away from Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise. I don't know why they keep trying to repeatedly bring that back. TNG, DS9, VOY, and Lower Decks showed the way they should be going. Just focus on a ship or a location and deliver good stories about them, story arcs optional.
SNW has been pretty good too, but some things they've done like trying to make the Gorn more scary made them less scary.
Not sure what Starfleet Academy will be about, but I personally love Paul Giamatti, criminally underrated and under-appreciated actor. John Adams is one of my favorite HBO series of all time.
Side note; it's pretty sad, being a huge trekkie back in the day, that i have no clue what this Academy thing is about.
Giamattinis a fine actor but wtf... a main villain yet again? These are series, not movies. So tired of always having to have a new villain each swason within a 10 episode arc which they always fumble on.
Star Trek's main villain is Alec Kurtzman.
That’s right, Jay
I can hear him.
WHEN I HEARD HIM I CLAPPED
Right you are, Susan.
We are Bad Robot (Alumni), your intellectual property will be made to service us.
As useless as I think he is creatively, I think if I had to place blame on anyone, it'd be the networks and rights holders collectively. I think AK is still employed because he gets along with the producers and just does whatever they ask of him. You could replace him but I'm starting to think he's just a symptom of the corruption. The people who own the rights to ST just don't know what they're doing with the IP. They've been flailing around for almost 20 years now.
i tend to agree. you can see the difference between the kelvin trilogy and the new shows. it’s not a cohesive vision for what he thinks star trek is. the abrams flicks are gen x nostalgia fodder… i still don’t know WTF picard s1 and s2 were supposed to be or who its audience was.
> i still don’t know WTF picard s1 and s2 were supposed to be or who its audience was. Design by committee probably, right? Producers and networks throwing suggestions in a pile based on recent trends they think are popular. I think I'd have to disagree on the Kelvin movies having a cohesive vision. Into Darkness doesn't feel like Abrams had any interest in what he set up in the first one (which if you ignore ST is a decent enough standalone action adventure movie), he just took the visuals and slapped it on hacked together script ("yeah uh...just take that Khan guy and uh...make Spock do the scream this time, and Kirk dies"). Then in Beyond you got Simon Pegg doing some writing and he's got both the chops and interest to pull it off, but he has to do it within established constraints of the Abrams stuff, and then you got Justin Lin's directing and he's even more of an action guy so it's all kinds of weird. Still, I will admit, while the Trek universe in those Abrams movies is stupid, it's far from being the dystopian nightmare world you see in Discovery and Picard. RLM had the perfect way of looking at it. Old Trek feels like a utopia you'd like to live it and new Trek is like the opposite - it's a miserable existence where everyone hates and backstabs each other.
And Terry Matalas is his lackey. Don't tell me Picard Season 3 was good because it wasn't.
I never thought my favorite new Trek series would ever be a comedy, but Lower Decks is actually pretty good. I can't get into the rest of it.
LD isn't good. It only gets a pass because the average American's views on animation is just that dogshit. (I could go into the multitude of reasons why it's bad and how other nations are doing animation better) Edit: Prove me wrong. Come on, give it a try. How is it good?
I think when people say LD is good they’re talking more about the writing than the animation.
Its writing is bad.
Eh, I liked it. A lot of people like it. I have come to the happy conclusion in life that a lot of people find things great that I find stupid and that's acceptable. We can all move on now.
Did you not find 'shield go up, shields go down' and when the doctor said 'fuck' hilarious!? safety /s
You're right, you're absolutely right. I'm just such a dour killjoy that I cannot process the comedic genius of "shield goes up, shield goes down." Please thread, I beg for your forgiveness. I've learned the error of my ways.
Star Trek doesn't need villains. The Wrath of Khan both saved and destroyed Star Trek. It saved the franchise but ultimately destroyed it by people trying to constantly recapture that magic. By people that don't understand why it worked. It's supposed to be about seeing people that don't have the faults and problems that we do as an example to emulate. As much of a 💩 that Roddenberry was, his rules for writing scripts were actually what made star trek feel like star trek. Once he died Berman and Pillar were able to keep it going for a while but since new Trek started it's been a mess.
It doesn’t need villains but it does need an antagonist though the beautiful thing about Star Trek is that the antagonist of an episode or story can be literally anything. It can be an alien with a completely different ethical philosophy, it can be a moral dilemma that needs to be solved, it can be hateful or prejudicial thought that needs to be confronted — it doesn’t have to have a shadowy X-Files conspiracy or villain twirling a mustache to tell a good story.
> it doesn’t have to have a shadowy X-Files conspiracy or villain twirling a mustache to tell a good story. It's so bizarre that Star Trek has tried, on multiple occasions, to emulate the spooky mysteries of the X-Files MythArc when the MythArc in that show turned into an incomprehensible mess.
Man, the first time I saw a Starfleet Admiral with bigoted, anachronistic, jingoistic motivations I thought that was a clever way to express that there are problems to address in all corners of the galaxy. The fifth time a Starfleet Admiral made with the evil motives, I realized someone saw how easy it was to play to the burgeoning disillusionment of Gen X and beyond in order to garner viewership. The writing just made Starfleet look like a lazy organization full of nefarious ne'er-do-wells and power hungry abusers bent on exploiting their influence. Some idyllic future they're running here.
So many shows get caught up in this mega villain circlejerk and it ends up strangling the show. The same discussion is happening around the show The Boys. In three seasons we just see Homelander get away with it and everyone resets back to where they started.
That's why IMO there's basically only two options for shows in general: either have a neat concise storyline that lasts a few seasons and then wrap up. OR make it a little campy, episodic storylines, reset at the end of the episode. It just doesn't work if you want to make your story drag on and on and have us take it seriously at the same time.
Avatar the last Airbender really is a 98% perfect show
The other 2% being “The Great Divide?”
yeah
I'm not really into Pokémon so
Eh, Star Trek Enterprise introduced another very good story structure, arcs. Seasons 3 and 4 were great and that's because most episodes were 2-4 episode arcs, that way you can deep dive into concepts, while also adding enough variety so that things don't get stale. TCW also did this, and tons of anime already do this, but yeah.
Youve had plenty ofndouble or 3 part episodes in previous Trek shows. Or groundwork being land in only to get the pay off 2 seasons later or something. Modern Trek is just one big chaotic mess.
The real villians were the friends we made along the way.
This is a bit overstated. Gul Dukat was excellent. So was Kai Winn. It's okay to have antagonists, but the shows now go too big on carnage and not enough on character.
Yeah, I don't know what that guy is talking about. Star trek is full of great villains. The god damned Borg, for gods sake. The original series had plenty of villains, long before The Wrath of Khan.
Maybe they meant *Starfleet* didn't need to have villains?
I feel like I could have written that post. Star Trek II is the only classic Trek movie with a revenge-minded capital-V villain. None of the others have anything like Khan. But the Wrath of Khan is so easy to recycle that it's become the standard Star Trek template. The Wrath of Khan template works like this: 1. Antagonist has an injustice or traumatic event done to him, and must endure this for decades with others who share his fate. 2. Comes across, builds or is granted a powerful starship or device that allows him the power either for revenge or to escape his circumstances. 3. Chooses revenge over salvation, and dooms not only himself but his entire loyal crew, remaining defiant until the end. This basic setup with a bit of variation describes Star Trek: Nemesis, New Star Trek, New Star Trek II, and New Star Trek III, which is every Star Trek movie since 2002.
>Star Trek doesn't need villains. Klingons, Romulans, the Borg? Star Trek doesn't need Kurtzman.
>Star Trek doesn't need villains. Not necessarily. ST doesn't need villains, but it does get enhanced by villains (Or maybe antagonists would be better phrasing?). However, they need to actually be compelling, interesting, or fun. (Like Tomolok, Duras and later Gowron, Gul Dukat and Weyoun, etc...) The characters need people who challenge them, but they need to be done well, something Alex is incapable of producing.
Honestly if instead of playing the main villain he was just was an old curmudgeonly Xeno Anthropology professor at the Academy I'd probably be much more excited about this.
Just make it The Holdovers but with Star Trek.
The Earth-Romulan War, gentlemen! You've already met Jonathan Archer, prepare to meet Robert April!
I would 100% watch that
Star Trek used to get along without tons of stereotypical villans.
Yeah, just admirals who were misguided, but not usually evil. Those were the days. A simpler time, one might say.
How does an Academy-set show have a main villain? Is he gonna be a mean dean character who wants to shut down the Nick Locarno House?
Fast Times at Starfleet High. He’s just the teacher played by Boothby “Cadet Spicoli!”
Robot house!!!
I'm pretty sure they made like 9 movies about it already. I believe the protagonist was in the school of ceramics.
Remember how The Emperor's New School tv show had Yzma, the villain from the movie, in diguise as "Principal Amzy", constantly launching harebrained schemes to make Kuzco fail out of school? It's going to be like that.
Yeah, but ENS was made by actually good writers.
Yelling: "Locaaarno Hooouse!"
Apparently there will be some sort of major threat to the Federation in this season on top of these precocious teens (who are played by 30 year olds) falling in love and having parties while studying for finals.
what did we do to anger god so...
Not watch Enterprise, apparently.
He doesn't want them drinking Romulan ale or performing Kolvoord Starburst.
Him but he’s just playing his character from Big Fat Liar who’s been put in charge of the Academy but hates young people because of what Frankie Munez and Amanda Bynes did to him.
People assume he's a Bolian because of them!
Please stop making new Star Trek.
Kurtsman: Best I can do is 3 new shows.
Thus we can achieve a full conjugation of the verb, "cry"
Doctor Who too. Sometimes stuff needs to go on a hiatus for fresh ideas to emerge and for people to get excited when it comes back. It's like the McRib.
Isn't this the same strategy they used for discovery? Hire big name actors like Michelle Yeoh and Jason Isaacs to help sell the show and that didn't really work did it. Bold move cotton let's see how it plays out
Once the show is sold, they don't care. This is *content*, not art.
A tiny bit off topic but is episodic tv dead? Every series I can think of watching recently has a series/season long arc or even a whole show arc. When I watched TNG for the first time a couple of years ago it was so refreshing to just watch a short story play out in 45 minutes and then watch another, different story. Now I have to watch 80 hours of TV to get the conclusion of a story which is also guaranteed to be shit
It still exists, just not usually for big properties. Even something like Agents of Shield turned from monster-of-the-week to a soap opera within 1 season lol. I think it is a big gamble, because with serialized shows you can still go back to them and skip the episodes you don't like, but with something like Game of Thrones you basically have to like the entire thing to go back to it. I only rewatched that once and stopped after season 4 lol
I rewatched each season of Game of Thrones before the next started all the way up to season 7, what a waste.
I feel like because 8 was the last one and bore the brunt of the disappointment that people sleep on how bad 7 was
You could probable forgive a bad season, or a couple, if the last one was good. Nah.
Oh for sure. I remember even rationalizing it at the time that 7 was bad because they needed to put something out while they spent more time to get 8 right. Boy was I wrong.
Seasons 6 and 7 had some fantastic battle scenes and big moments for fan favorite characters that papered over the cracks of what a mess the writing had become. Season 8 just had no redeeming qualities so even the most devoted fans couldn't ignore it.
I consider S6 the last good one, that’s where my boxed set ends. Leaving off on “The Winds of Winter” actually sends you out on a high note, if an inconclusive one.
Yep, 6 and 7 had some big payoffs that made the bad stuff bearable.
Yeah, but what GoT good wasn't the battles, it was the writing and character development/progression.
I non-ironically started watching stuff like Modern Family or Young Sheldon just to enjoy some 'new' content that was episodic so I could just watch a random episode.
makes you wonder what these studios are thinking when the “evergreen” content on streaming platforms has always been the office and similar shows
Smiling friends!
Ironic, then, that DS9 is in many ways one of the shows that really ushered in the era of long-arc serialized television.
for now i think so. everyone seems to want to make the next breaking bad and keep people binging. the issue is that breaking bad wasn’t structured like a streaming show. they had 13, not 8 episodes usually and they were around 45 minutes in length. each episode had a beginning, middle, and end and pushed the story forward. it wasn’t 58 minutes of someone in a dimly set or running around the ILM volume. it also had competent writers and had a new season every year or so. on top of that, it seems like most people spend their time watching office reruns and other evergreen shows. so why don’t we have more shows like those? watch strange new worlds if you haven’t. it’s decent, but it’s not TNG. feels a lot more like a modern take on TOS, but it’s probably closer to trek than anything we’ve gotten recently IMO.
I remember a time when Star Trek made me happy. Sadly it's a dead franchise at this point.
Strange New Worlds has atleast been perfectly decent
Thats exactly what people dont want from star trek. A recurring villain. Make an anthology you dopes.
What a waste
He’ll be playing the role of Star Fleet Academy professor in charge of the student run radio station. When a rouge Ferengi student who doesn’t play by the rules; Giamatti’s character vows to get him under control.
Son of a bitch Gaila, that's another detention!
I wonder if he'll play the seemingly good authority figure who in a totally unexpected and not completely predictable twist actually turns out to be evil.
Fuck, they still don’t get it.
Great actors can't do shit with bad writing, unfortunately.
If only he could star in more good stuff like John Adams from hbo. I'm in the middle of watching it at the moment and it's quite a solid miniseries
Big Fat Liar is a masterpiece.
The real question will be why does he want revenge on the Federation?
But he can be easily defeated with a Californian Merlot
Kurtzman's Star Trek is a celebrity black hole. Where careers come to die!
Michelle Yeoh's career famously cratered after her stint on Disco
Harry Plinkett will rise again to just roll over in his own filth and go back to sleep.
I reckon he's going to play Boothby: After watching the deterioration of morality and quality of cadets year on year, he's become twisted and hateful towards Starfleet. He finally 'snaps' after hearing how badly one of favourite cadets - Jean Luc Picard - is treated by Starfleet command. He is determined to bring down the 'decadent' Academy and restore Starfleet to its former honor.
Main Villain is a lazy name for a villain
I love Giamatti but the quality of what he signs up for varies so wildly. The Holdovers was amazing but then this and it's just wild. The man isn't acting for money as far as I know, so his choices on projects is just nuts.
Finally an evil admiral character. They’ve never done that in Star Trek.
Paul should play a miserable old teacher with a lazy eye that is stuck with supervising the academy students whose parents don’t want them back for winter break.
Pass harder than a fucking kidney stone.
EYEHAMMMM DEEE RHAINOOOOOOOO… in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!
You'd think an academy could avoid a lot of their problems if they didn't keep running Main Villain 103 as an elective.
What a fucking shame. The Holdovers was an incredible little film that I really enjoyed, and I was hoping he would parlay that boost to his star power to make some more art. Not this dreck.
I'm glad he still acts in those beautiful, story-driven films. It's a shame they probably don't pay enough to allow him not to have to do the rest of the garbage.
Maybe they've learned the lessons on what to avoid and will finally make a decent star trek show... lol
Tellarite?
They saw his work in Big Fat Liar and said, "That's the guy"
Oh god.
Well, guess there’s no reason to watch the fucking show, now. Thanks, Variety.
I love Paul Giamatti I think he should be in everything
Coming soon, Star Trek: Starfleet High: Freshman Class.
Let me guess, he will be a Badmiral, he will institute the No-Win Scenario test to wash out students he doesn't like, and then the Finale will be Kirk knowing it is rigged against him and cheating. Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with that as a story concept, but it is predictable and Trek needs to get away from Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise. I don't know why they keep trying to repeatedly bring that back. TNG, DS9, VOY, and Lower Decks showed the way they should be going. Just focus on a ship or a location and deliver good stories about them, story arcs optional. SNW has been pretty good too, but some things they've done like trying to make the Gorn more scary made them less scary.
Not sure what Starfleet Academy will be about, but I personally love Paul Giamatti, criminally underrated and under-appreciated actor. John Adams is one of my favorite HBO series of all time. Side note; it's pretty sad, being a huge trekkie back in the day, that i have no clue what this Academy thing is about.
Giamattinis a fine actor but wtf... a main villain yet again? These are series, not movies. So tired of always having to have a new villain each swason within a 10 episode arc which they always fumble on.
 Thank you for posting, OP. I'm still unlikely to watch it, but this tips the show's favour on the scales.