Dropping in belatedly to say that my partner and I felt this was an improvement over the season premiere, and we felt it got things back on track.

Dropping back to add that Youku is making Mystic Nine available through free ad-supported video on demand through its app or through its YouTube channel. One episode is being released per day.

As of today, 13 episodes are posted in Youku’s English subtitle playlist and 12 on the English dub playlist on YouTube.

I’d been wondering when we’d hear about more women being cast for this show as the balance up to now was heavily skewed to men as compared to Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Stana Katic is someone who usually is cast as a lead, so it will be interesting to see what role she’s given in this one.

The continuance of Paramount+ as a standalone streamer is entirely dependent on the delay of the merger. I would take anything the current management says with a certain amount of skepticism as they are having to carry on while the antitrust challenge is ongoing.

Ellison has been transparent that he is looking to consolidate the WB and Paramount streamers or at minimum restructure and retarget their content and audiences. He’s looking for synergies and in his justifications to investors regarding the merger, he’s specifically cited the intention for Paramount and WB to use Skydance’s animation studios.

I actually wonder in hindsight to what degree Paramount and Nickelodeon proactively shut down renewals with animation houses in anticipation of a deal with Skydance.

It’s interesting that they believe that they have leverage — and that it just might be the case.

Ellison suffered a setback that should not be underestimated when Taylor Sheridan unequivocally rebuffed Paramount’s offer to renew his first look contract. He has been Paramount+’s biggest content producer but flatly rejected a renewal, despite extensive personal courting by David Ellison and one of his senior people brought over from Skydance.

So, it’s not obvious that the kind of creatives that Ellison wants to work with will actually be willing to sign on with him. The Hagemans are significant creators in animation and Skydance’s animation studio is a major part of its business. They really are in a position to insist that on Prodigy renewal as part of any deal.

The choices in this list are an odd mix of ones that almost everyone acknowledges as top ranked and others that are likely not.

A Mathematically Perfect Redemption as the only standalone Lower Decks episode to make the cut?

No TAS classics such as Yesteryear, The Slaver Weapon or the Counterclockwise Incident?

TNG Qpid but not Q Who?

Nothing at all from Prodigy — the best effort and most successful landing of a serialized season the franchise has achieved?

Thanks for the thought experiment OP.

My spouse and I found this season opener disappointing, if for different reasons.

My partner couldn’t get past the bad science. More, something made them feel like they were watching low budget mid 20th century scifi.

I found the performances/acting off across the board. Given the strength of the cast one has to wonder why they were overwrought and unconvincing. The pacing and rhythm of dialogue definitely was part of it. The direction has to be part of it but the episode director has done a lot of better episodes in the this era.

I’m usually pretty forgiving on science and engineering as long as the process feels right. Without the actors selling it, I just didn’t get into the show in a way that allowed for suspension of disbelief.

The cast is saying they feel this is their strongest season yet. Based on episode one, I am unconvinced.

This is good news.

It was well done and might be something Paramount is willing to do more of even if the television franchise is on ice.

The casting for this show is even more stacked than for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

That said, given that it’s a Cold War era show, I would expect a few more women in the mix — even if Shaw’s romantic interest is already stuck on Keiko, it’s difficult to imagine an 80s espionage scenario without women. So far, Millie Brady is the only woman mentioned in cast announcements.

Thanks VS for posting this.

Here’s the CBS News report from her home town of Atlanta.

It’s not a fan novel.

The Full Circle Voyager series is official tie-in fiction published by Pocketbooks and CBS. Official tie-in fiction is beta-canon. That is, canon until overwritten by something onscreen.

The key thing in this is that the tie-in writer for this series Kirsten Beyer has significant credibility and authority within the franchise. Her research and statements on the legal situation around this are credible and official.

Kirsten Beyer was in the middle of writing the Voyager books when she joined the television writers as of the first season of Discovery. She’s officially got the mandate as the expert keeper of canon in the writers room — even if she’s not always listened too. More, she was made the liaison for the tie-in writers to the shows as of 2017. She’s now a CoExecutive Producer and cocreator of SNW.

When that book was published, and she chased down the history on Locarno/Paris, she had the greatest access to past Executive Producers and internal legal advice and archives. She wouldn’t have claimed that without solid evidence.

I suspect that it had to do with the WGA contract at the time that TNG was in production.

Writers with a script credit got specific residuals for characters they created in a script according to what Beyer wrote. So, taking a one-off character and putting them in a main cast role in a new show would be providing creator credits for the entire show.

Chief Miles O’Brien is a different story altogether. Colm Meany was originally contracted as a background regular as the transporter chief but without a name. These kind of roles are reliable and keep actors eating while allowing them to audition for other roles.

According to what I heard at a Creation Con panel back in the early 90s, the showrunners eventually decided to give the character a name. Colm Meany wasn’t advised, nor was his agent — so Meany actually was raising a complaint that he was being replaced without notice, only to find out he’d been upgraded to a named part.

Kirsten Beyer actually is on the record saying that this was confirmed to her when she was writing the Voyager Full Circle novels.

In those books, she has the incident and the consequences as part of Paris’ backstory that gets thrown in his face in a legal proceeding back on Earth.

My recollection is that she printed this in an author’s note in the specific book so it must have had legal clearance for the tie-in literature.

Unfortunately, that Instagram post seems unavailable now.

In any event, I would be happy to see both James Frain back as Sarek and Mia Kirshner as Amanda Grayson.

I was one of those who really liked their performances as those characters.

According to this report, Godzilla Minus Zero will be the first Japanese movie to meet the standard in North America required for release as ‘filmed in IMAX.’

Minus Zero is later in time than Minus One.

Exasperatingly literal.

I’m hoping to get to an IMAX version.

Really unfortunate that trawl fishing damaged the wreck — but also incredible that the ship was still in use in the early 1960s.

Just imagine — Godzilla is back in a movie with his name in the title.

Do you mean this 2025 Korean movie?

I haven’t seen that one but it sounds interesting. Thanks for the recommendation!

My sense is that North Americans just aren’t aware of the existence of high concept or well resourced productions coming out from Asia. China, Korea and Japan have large television and film production industries and the vfx specialists to make shows and films of similar or superior production quality. We’re just conditioned to think that’s Hollywood’s specialty.

The creative choices will be different and the narratives will reflect a difference in culture — and constraints of national censorship in the case of China — but there’s as wide a range of styles and types of stories.

Unfortunately, most of us only have access to the slice of Asian entertainment that Netflix choses to license. Disney+ partners with Chinese producers but then only offers the shows in SE Asia outside China rather than bringing them to Hulu. Amazon Prime was licensing Asian shows a few years ago but seems to have pulled back. Some shows are available to watch with ads on official sites on YouTube.

Asian streamers are available for subscription in North America but the majority of the content licensed at this point is romances and Idol dramas, with the occasional scifi show or thriller tossed in.