They talk about that on Starter Trek. The ending was sort of slapped together on a script they had laying around and unfinished.
Hey...just thought of something. Valeris from Trek 6. What could Starfleet really do to her? She's a Vulcan. She can do a human life sentence standing on her head. From her point of view, she'd be right back in action as quick as Burnham. In fact, barring murder or illness, she could be a Captain by Picard's time. Starfleet has made way more awful people Captains and Admirals.
Well, the idea in Star Trek is rehabilitation. I imagine they'd consider the scenario you described an astounding success. Just look at Commander Ro.
Every morning before breakfast, she has to undergo a videoconference that's just Spock staring into her soul with all his disappointment.
Case in point: Spock, who basically mind raped her for the information, and Kirk who sanctioned the rape.
Ironically, if some AI firm wanted to make "Flar Flek" out of scans of the show, the FCC and zombie-congress would thumbs up that shit.
There is no AI that will ever be superior to human creations. Regardless of your feelings on the actual piece.
I'm trying to think of my most hated movie. Tossup between "Gummo" and "The Idiots". I would watch those over AI slop. AI slop sucks harder than "Gummo" and "The Idiots". And "Gummo" and "The Idiots" make the blandest season 3 episode of Disco look like "Empire Strikes Back".
The thing is, at least with Gummo, you can discuss things like author intent or technical prowess. You can dissect the failure. AI just exists. It has no depth.
I don't know why anyone would be surprised by this. What the fuck did idiot think would happen. "oh, this. This is what they mean by 'good' trek". it's exactly the same as SNW or STD and Paramount owns it. period. it's their own fault.
So, I'm not involved in it, but my understanding is that there was an agreement between them and Paramount which limited them to several 15 minute segments, and that if there was a dispute there was a mechanism for arbitration. Putting a copyright strike against them with YT was not a legal option according to that agreement. The story will come out eventually.
I enjoyed Gummo, I think a lot of people don't really appreciate it for what it is. I grew up in Florida, I didn't grow up or live like the characters in Gummo do. But when I was younger I was a manager for a fast food franchise and moved around to 4 diffrent stores within a 10-12 mile radius. Two were in a middle to upper class area (the area I grew up in), one was in a middle to lower class area, and the fourth one was pretty much next to a lower class area. Most of the employees were teenagers in the first two, the second one had a mix of teens, young adults, and some older adults looking for part time work. The last one had a large amount of parents, older adults, and teens as well. From the customers to the employees at the last one, pretty much every charcter in Gummo had one or more counterparts thateither worked there at one point or was customer. I'll watch the movie every once in a while, and can still think "Oh, yeah we had a Dot work there. Had the chair wrestler arrested in the parking lot. Fired Tummler. Helen got pregnant at a party, doesn't remember who the father is. Bunny Boy got chased by his sister with a butcher knife through the lobby. The other Dot flashed me trying to get free food." Wow... I'm having flash backs. The last location was interesting and oddly amusing.
There's a term in photography (though I think it also applies to moving pictures) called punctum. It's the little, unexpected extra in a photo. It is the face, or the hand, or the expression or some other element of the image that the photographer didn't necessarily notice as they made the picture. It is simultaneously never the subject and entirely the subject. And punctum for one person may not necessarily be a punctum for the next. That's the kind of depth that AI doesn't have an probably never will. It's soulless.
As I was watching the newest episode of Strange New Worlds, I had a strange reaction. I felt a certain amount of rage bubbling. Not because I disliked the episode. No, in fact I think it may be one of my favorites of the franchise. I found myself enraged because of the wasted potential. Paul Wesley's Kirk has steadily grown on my since his first appearance in A Quality of Mercy. And it's grown, actually with each subsequent appearance by Wesley. Last year, before Ellison had fully cemented his acquisition of Paramount, I was excited by the prospect of a Year One series. This is not something I would have imagined possible just a few short years ago, but the writers and producers of Strange New Worlds have demonstrated a love and deep understanding of the material that has made me yearn to spend more time there. So when I read that the sets had been disassembled after the completion of its truncated fifth season, I was heartbroken. And now I'm angry. Very angry. I don't know what, exactly, the long-term plan is for Star Trek. I can tell they are looking at some kind of reset. And they are fools. Star Trek 2009 was an attempt at a reset. Discovery was an attempt as well. But what have been the most popular Treks since its relaunch in 2009? Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks. I won't comment on my own personal feelings towards Picard (Though I still think Season 2 was the worst season of Trek ever allowed to air). Instead, I want to focus on WHY those shows were the most popular and / or critically acclaimed. These shows actually gave most fans what they wanted. The fact that Paramount could not / would not capitalize on that just demonstrates they don't really know what the fans want. Paramount desperately wants Star Trek to be its Star Wars, or MCU, or Batman or what have you. But what Ellison and the others continuously fail to realize is Trek will NEVER be like that. Star Trek has never been about great action, fantastic ship battles, or anything of that sort. It has always been the characters and the story that has drawn in the audience. This may be anecdotal, but one thing I've never heard anyone say is that they heard everyone talking about the new Star Trek movie or show and decided they just had to seek it out. No, what I always hear from fans is something along the lines of "My dad loved it, and I used to watch it with him" or "Well, I caught a stray episode on TV one day and got hooked." And that is what has made Star Trek different as a franchise. In stock terms, if the MCU is Tesla, then Star Trek is Johnson and Johnson. It never makes waves, but it's reliable and steady. TOS took off after it hit syndication and kids could watch it every day after school. Paramount used to understand this, which is why TNG and DS9 went straight to syndication. But then Paramount got greedy and made Voyager exclusive to UPN (The Unpopular Network, as Jonathan Frakes said). It didn't even get two full shows out before it sank the whole franchise. Obviously there was more going on than just the UPN issue, but that was the beginning of the end of Trek's golden era. So of course Paramount / CBS made the same mistake with Discovery, but this time worse. Instead of just making it exclusive to their network, they put behind a streaming paywall. And they put ALL of Star Trek behind a streaming paywall. Then they wrung their hands and wondered why on Earth they couldn't get new fans. They yanked all of Trek off Netflix, where it was actually finding a new audience, and put it behind the paywall of the least-subscribed streaming service in existence. Of course, when they finally, finally started to build a new audience, that is when they decided to say "Nope, we're just going to bin it all and start anew". They have no idea how to build an audience. No idea how to retain one. I mean, it isn't just Paramount of course. Netflix, Disney, they're all doing a great job of showing audiences they can not trust these studios to actually maintain a franchise's momentum. Rather, they'd prefer to chase the ephemeral big payday. That's why the Mandalorian, the lone new Star Wars property to achieve mainstream cultural relevancy AND critical acclaim, went down with a whimper. That's why the MCU is fumbling as they grasp for their next Endgame-level storyline. And who even knows what WB is doing with DC. But Star Trek? To grow, it needs accessibility. It needs investment with its audience. It needs more than 10 episodes a season, so that fans can get to know and love the characters. It needs to stop chasing the financial success of Star Wars and remember how it became the giant it is today. You want fans? Put full episodes for free on Youtube. Inundate TikTok and Instagram with short-form clips. Get it in front of people when they don't even know they're asking for it. Because no one is going to go looking for it. They never have, they never will. That's just not Star Trek. Though I fear it's too late. The upcoming movie, which I will believe in when I see it, is crowing that it will go farther in the future than any Trek series. Is that what they think the fans want? As @Ten Lubak said, why not just throw it a million years into the future, then? No. Fans want good stories in a familiar universe. That is why 31st-cemtury Trek failed dismally. While Starfleet Academy was far better than I expected, that was in spite of its time setting, not because of it. That doesn't mean more same-old-same-old either, like some of the grifters on Youtube would have you think. That means something fresh, something new, but still recognizable. Lower Decks did that. Prodigy did that. Strange New Worlds did that. Picard did that, sometimes for better sometimes for worse. And its what made SFA enjoyable. It's maddening to me, because I can't understand how something seemingly so obvious has become so inscrutable to those in charge. Do I think Ellison is trying to kill Trek? No. He'll make whatever he thinks will make money, he doesn't care (His previous output demonstrates that). But he doesn't seem to know how to make money with Star Trek. For the franchise's sake, I hope he eventually figures it out.
I just awhile ago finished reading "Firestarter" (as part of a marathon along with "Dead Zone" and "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon"). The lead goon villain, John Rainbird, has this great mental reverie about how he learned the secrets of the world's greatest safe cracker, and the greatest lesson was "if you kill the money, the safe has fucking beaten you". Rainbird adds "the FBI and CIA had a long history of killing the money". Hell, right now, the straight of Hormuz is Trump killing the money. Paramount are big moneykillers when it comes to Trek. They seem gleefully poised to strap 20 pounds of C4 to the safe thinking the money is gonna rain down instead of singe to ash.
