Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, roll up and be the first to subscribe to the greatest streaming service of all time: the brand-new MountCock+!
If only it was real…
If you haven’t heard, Paramount Global – the company behind Paramount+, the Star Trek franchise, and others – is in a pretty bad place financially. That isn’t “breaking news;” it’s been the case for quite some time. As Paramount has continued to lose money, its executives have put a lot of faith in streaming to swoop in as some kind of saviour – but they’ve learned, belatedly, that streaming is a difficult market to crack at the best of times. And these are not the best of times!
Here’s what I think happened a few years ago. An elderly executive or investor – who knows nothing about the internet, data, streaming, or any of the complex technologies required to make it work – saw the success of Netflix, looked at CBS/Paramount’s own back catalogue and library of content and said to some poor, overworked employee “make me my own Netflix.” In the mid-2010s, Netflix was the hottest up-and-coming property in the entertainment world, and Paramount wanted a piece of that action. But rather than work with Netflix, Paramount wanted to be a competitor – despite having none of the outside investment, financial support, development knowledge, or technological know-how.
Logo of Paramount Global.
I really wish that I’d been faster at getting to work on this story, because “MountCock+” would’ve been a great April Fools’ gag if I’d made it a week ago! Oh well, lesson learned.
The title of this piece – which, in case it really needs saying, is facetious and won’t really be the name of a potential newly-merged streaming service – comes from news that new Paramount investor and potential new owner, SkyDance Media, is considering rolling Paramount+ and the Peacock streaming service together into one single entity. This would give subscribers to either platform access to a lot more films and TV shows, and the hope is that rolling two unprofitable streamers together will help the restructured Paramount/Paradance/Dancemount (or whatever the new company might be called) edge its way closer to profitable territory.
Paramount Global and Skydance Media may be in talks about a merger or sale.
Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: small, specialised streaming platforms that only offer relatively few shows and films within a single niche have always been a bad idea. It was a bad idea when DC Comics tried it, it was a bad idea when CNN tried it, and the fact that DC Universe and CNN+ no longer exist as independent platforms is all the proof you’ll ever need. Netflix succeeded in the 2010s because it was a comparatively cheap and convenient way to access a huge library of content. Yes, there were whole genres on Netflix that you’d never even touch because they were of no interest to you. But there was so much other stuff that was appealing that it made a Netflix subscription worthwhile.
That was what convinced me to cut the cord – or rather, the wire to my satellite dish! In the late 2000s I got Sky – a satellite TV provider here in the UK. Getting Sky in the first place had been one of my ambitions for a long time; ever since it launched in the ’90s, the idea of hundreds of channels had been massively appealing! But by the late 2010s, the media landscape was changing. When Star Trek: Discovery was only going to be available on Netflix, I signed up so I could watch it. And I found streaming to be so convenient and at such a good price point that I very quickly dropped Sky altogether.
You can still see a satellite dish on many houses here in the UK.
The reasons for Netflix’s success were its convenience, low price point, and huge library of content. Take away one of those factors and it wouldn’t have become the phenomenon that it did – and as the so-called “streaming wars” rage in the 2020s, it’s a combination of those same factors in reverse that account for the failure or underperformance of other, newer streaming platforms. Less content for a higher price turns people away – even big fans of some franchises. I’m a Trekkie, but in 2024 I’ve only paid for a single month of Paramount+ so far; the streaming platform just doesn’t feel worth it most of the time.
Roll Paramount+ content in with another streaming service, though, and suddenly it becomes a more enticing proposition. As long as the price stays low as the library of content grows, there would be much more of an incentive to sign up for MountCock+ than there is for either Paramount+ or Peacock individually. Continuing as competitors will, in all likelihood, lead to the failure of both platforms, but if they join forces they might stand a chance. Even though Skydance doesn’t own Peacock and thus profits will have to be split, it still feels like a good idea.
There are currently too many streaming services. Some will never be profitable for their parent companies.
Almost every time Star Trek’s parent company has been shaken up, there have been changes for the franchise. And not all of these changes have been positive. We have to keep in mind that it’s possible that a Skydance/hedge fund-owned corporation would have less of an interest in Star Trek, especially if the franchise seems to be underperforming, not bringing in or retaining subscribers, or even running too hot. While I don’t expect to see imminent cancellations, it’s something to be aware of as it’s happened before. It’s also possible that new corporate leadership might be keener on feature films with cinematic releases than on making more made-for-streaming series.
On the other hand, Paramount has been slow and even reluctant to listen to Trekkies sometimes. There’s been a significant fan campaign to create a sequel/successor show to Star Trek: Picard – but after more than a year, it hasn’t garnered a response from those at the top of the corporation. So perhaps new faces in the boardroom would be better at reading the room and understanding where the fan community is and what kind of projects we’d like to see. This is an area where Paramount has needed to improve for a long time, so again there’s the potential to see some positive changes.
Trekkies have been clamouring for another Picard-era series.
Business and finance is not my strong suit nor my area of expertise – and I don’t blame you if the details are boring or difficult to grasp. I’m pretty sure I’m oversimplifying it because I don’t fully understand it either; when you’re looking at corporations that routinely deal in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars… it can be hard to really comprehend the kinds of decisions that they take. But as fans, and as consumers of media in a competitive marketplace, we need to know a little about what’s happening behind-the-scenes. The future of Paramount Global will have an impact on future Star Trek productions, on the corporation’s other streaming projects, and even on its cinematic output and television channels.
For my two cents, I can see why amalgamating Paramount+ and Peacock – or Paramount+ with some other streaming platform, if the Peacock deal falls through – would make sense. After several years of streaming becoming an increasingly balkanised and fractured marketplace, bringing different platforms together just makes sense. There’s a general unwillingness on the part of audiences to pay for more than two or three different streaming services, and smaller, second-tier platforms will struggle in such a challenging environment. I’m a Trekkie – albeit one who’s been feeling a bit burned out of late – but even I have never paid for a full year’s worth of Paramount+; it’s a service I pick up for a month or two at a time to watch a couple of shows. On a related note: have you checked out my review of Halo Season 2 yet?
It’s the Master Chief!
So could the hypothetical MountCock+ turn things around? I think it has to have a better chance of turning a profit than either Paramount+ or Peacock do individually – though it will perhaps need a better name than I’ve given it! But in theory, a bigger streaming platform with more original and legacy content, backed up by a corporate merger that brings more film franchises and television shows under its umbrella is a good thing. We don’t want any one corporation to have a monopoly in this marketplace, of course, but creating platforms that are more consumer-friendly and don’t see small bundles of content paywalled off at every turn is a good thing and a positive development.
“Watch this space” is probably the soundest advice right now! Paramount has been in talks for a while about possible mergers, sales, or splitting off different parts of its business, so nothing is set in stone and this latest Skydance/Peacock proposal is unofficial at best. It could happen – or Paramount could end up going in a very different direction. Still, corporate changes are afoot – and I feel increasingly confident of major news breaking before the year is over.
All properties discussed above remain the copyright of their respective broadcaster, distributor, studio, etc. This article is not financial or investment advice. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I am unapologetically a politics geek! And 2024 is, without a doubt, one of the biggest and most exciting political years in a long time. If you’ll permit me the indulgence – and the diversion from what I usually talk about here on the website – I thought it could be a bit of fun to talk about what’s coming up this year for both the United States and the United Kingdom, with a focus on what to watch and where I like to get my political fix.
Although politics can be fascinating in all sorts of places and all sorts of contexts, I have two real areas of interest: the US presidency and – understandably as a Brit – the upcoming UK general election. We may touch on a couple of other places tangentially, but those are the two elections I’m most interested in and will be watching most closely this year.
Ready for round 2?
It’s rare to get a single year in which both the United States and the United Kingdom go to the polls for big general elections. In fact, the last time this happened was in 1992 – when John Major was unexpectedly re-elected as Prime Minister in May before Bill Clinton unseated George Bush in November. With the current British government consistently behind the opposition in opinion poll after opinion poll, an autumn election could be on the cards for us this year; I’ve heard November the 14th and October the 24th bandied about as potential election days. These dates would put the UK and US elections within a few days of each other – something that hasn’t happened since 1964.
The ’92 general election is the first one that I can really remember following and being interested in as a kid – even as many of the policy issues went way over my head, I was still gripped by the democratic process and the idea that we could have another new Prime Minister. In those days I didn’t pay as much attention to the American election; my fascination with the US and its systems of government would develop later! But I was definitely following along with John Major’s “soapbox” campaign in 1992 as he faced off against a renewed Labour Party under the leadership of Neil Kinnock. Listening to election news on the radio at lunchtime at school definitely singled me out as a geek!
Former British Prime Minister John Major in 1992.
But that’s enough history for now!
As media-literate folks – which I assume you are if you’re reading an article like this one, at any rate – we want to keep on top of what’s going on in the political sphere… but we don’t want to succumb to bias along the way. With the political environments both here in the UK and over in the US being so divided and polarised, finding unbiased or at least fair sources is increasingly difficult. It’s contingent upon us to not simply accept what we’re being told, but to double-check, or to look around for other sources of news. In this piece, I want to highlight a handful of outlets that I personally follow and regularly check in with – not because they’re free from all bias, but because they can provide analysis and insight that I find interesting or useful.
News and politics can be entertaining, and a well-presented programme can go a long way to making up for “boring” things like policy details or statistics. But we have to be careful not to let flashy graphics or a charismatic presenter blow us off-course; just because a speaker is articulate or passionate doesn’t mean they’re speaking the truth. That sentence should be applied to politicians… but it’s also true of presenters, anchors, analysts, podcasters, and other folks in the news media space.
BBC presenter Jeremy Vine and his “path to Downing Street” graphic in 2019.
So I guess what I’m saying is this: don’t take any individual news source as “gospel,” nor even really at face value. If you have the time to research a subject – by which I mean doing more than just a cursory Google search – then that’s great; trying to gather different sources that examine the same topic or story is just as good.
That’s what I try to do, at least. I’ve diversified my news sources in recent years, and it really is amazing how one-sided some outlets can be. Even if we don’t agree with what someone has to say, hearing another perspective can be incredibly valuable. In these increasingly polarised times, stepping outside of one’s personal media bubble can be uncomfortable, and I get that. But even if your only objective is to better understand the other side’s talking points so you can more effectively argue against their position… it’s still worth doing!
The new BBC News studio.
Having seen many elections and referenda come and go over the years, I find a lot of the passion behind individual candidates and parties to be a younger person’s game. When the same pundits and talking heads hailing this election as being “the most important in our lifetime!!!” have been using that exact same line for twenty years or more… well, let’s just say the impact wears off! That doesn’t mean that there aren’t big and important issues at stake, of course. There usually are!
Donald Trump is someone who, for close to a decade now, has managed to evoke – and provoke – incredibly strong reactions from supporters and opponents alike. His presence in the election this year (assuming he survives the tangled mess of court cases he’s facing) automatically makes it a contentious and polarising race. Here in the UK, the departure of Boris Johnson from the political stage has left us – at least in theory – with two less-charismatic Prime Ministerial candidates! But there are other factors in the race, including the emergence of Reform as a new political party on the right, debates over polarising issues like immigration and the conflict in the Middle East, and the ongoing fallout from Brexit.
Donald Trump’s campaign slogan from 2016.
I’m not in the business of telling people who to vote for or how to vote. And this year – for the first time in a long time, really – I’m not actually certain who I’m going to be voting for here in the UK. I have my ideological leanings – as we all do, of course – and here in the UK there are more than two parties to choose from… even if only the main two seem capable of forming a government. But I won’t be “making an endorsement” nor telling anyone how I think they should exercise their right to vote. As far as I’m concerned, that’s between you and the ballot box!
What I’m going to do now is briefly highlight a handful of pundits, podcasts, content creators, and TV programmes that I think are worth checking out and following as this busy political year unfolds. There are some talented journalists and analysts out there in internet-land, and even if you just put something on in the background while you’re working or doing chores, it can still be useful and you’ll still get something out of it.
A sign indicating the way into a polling station in the UK.
Now for the caveats: this is all my own opinion, meaning nobody paid me for a spot on this list. Most of the channels discussed below can be found on YouTube – which has become one of my go-to platforms for political content – but some can be found either on their own website or on platforms like Apple Podcasts. I’ll try to summarise what it is that I like about each channel/creator – but nothing about this is in any way objective.
With all of that out of the way, let’s look at my list – which is in no particular order.
Number 1: Political Currency
There are several podcasts in the UK at the moment in which former political opponents share a stage. I guess that kind of thing is in vogue at the moment – but it’s simultaneously interesting to hear from people with different ideological leanings and somewhat heartening, in these times of polarisation and division, to see two former adversaries working together. Political Currency features former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and his one-time rival, former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls. The two seem to have developed a genuine rapport after being away from frontline politics for close to a decade now, and their take – particularly on matters of fiscal and economic policy – can be fascinating.
Number 2: Brian Tyler Cohen
One of the biggest independent political shows on the progressive side of the aisle, Brian Tyler Cohen has been able to interview sitting members of Congress and even state governors. His show has different segments featuring a selection of recurring guests who really know their stuff when it comes to the legal and political issues of the day, and as a result it’s quickly become one of my go-to political outlets. However… I desperately wish that Cohen would stop using such awful clickbait titles for his videos and clips! There’s no need, and when every single video is presented as “the biggest breaking news story that’s just sure to torpedo Donald Trump’s entire career…” well, it wears pretty thin. In short: great content… once you look past the horrible clickbait titles.
Number 3: PBS Washington Week
A political show that I’ve only recently come across, Washington Week is a measured, calm discussion between journalists and political commentators, and usually tackles most of the big stories of the week. Because it’s a weekly show, there isn’t as much of an opportunity to discuss breaking news or stories in progress, but that can be an advantage in some ways. PBS – an American broadcaster largely funded by donations – seems to have less of an outright bias than some of the other mainstream news outlets, and that’s reflected in Washington Week’s calmer tone and round-table format.
Number 4: The “Mainstream Media”
I’m lumping all of the main broadsheets, terrestrial news bulletins, and cable news channels into one entry for this list! Practically all of them rely on the same couple of newswires for many of their stories, after all. It can be hard to differentiate between some of the cable news broadcasters, particularly in the United States, and one should be aware of the ideological leanings and biases they have – as well as which mega-corporation owns which news outlet. But there’s still something to be said for old-school journalism, and practically all of the big newspapers and mainstream news channels have stories worth reading, interviews worth listening to, and investigative reporting that can shine a light on candidates, policies, and the political situation as a whole.
Number 5: Times Radio
I’m in two minds about Times Radio. On the one hand, the new radio station – backed up by the long-running Times newspaper – has some well-respected political journalists, some great discussion pieces, and has started a new podcast dedicated to the upcoming election. On the other, its coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is laughably poor, so much so that I don’t trust a word of it. Definitely one to pick and choose which stories to follow… and one I’m a little suspect of. When it gets its political journalism right, Times Radio can be an interesting listen. When it goes too far down the propaganda route on Ukraine… I’m switching off.
Number 6: LegalEagle
LegalEagle is an interesting one. The YouTube channel, which is run by a professional lawyer in the United States, began by looking at how the law and court cases are presented in works of fiction; there’s even an episode examining courtroom drama in an episode of Star Trek! But as the 2020 election unfolded, the channel started to do more videos looking at Trump’s legal cases, and this has continued as the ex-President’s legal woes have mounted. Though it’s not really about pure politics, if you want a closer examination of the law and how it could impact the election, LegalEagle is a great place to look.
Number 7: Fox News
Bear with me on this one, especially if you’re to the left-of-centre politically. Fox is the single largest conservative-leaning news channel in the United States, though to its credit it wears its bias on its sleeve. If you want to know what right-wingers, Republicans, and Trump supporters are thinking – and perhaps more importantly, why they’re making certain arguments or favouring certain topics – Fox is a good place to start. And despite its reputation, there are some journalists and analysts worth listening to on Fox. Some of the big hitters, like Chris Wallace, have now departed the network, but I’d single out Neil Cavuto, Bret Baier, and John Roberts as presenters whose analysis and interviews can still be worth tuning in for.
Number 8: The News Agents
A political podcast comprised of ex-BBC journalists, The News Agents is another I listen to almost every day. Unfortunately, the podcast is late with its uploads to YouTube, meaning you’ll have to listen to it at its source if you want to get that day’s episode instead of one that’s a couple of days behind schedule. No idea why the folks at Global Player can’t get their act together for that… but never mind! Because it’s hosted by bona fide journalists with years of experience covering politics, The News Agents brings a lot to the table – and there’s occasional discussion about how some of the big political stories are being covered in the media, too, which can be fascinating.
Number 9: Robert Reich
Former US Secretary of Labor (and professor) Robert Reich has a YouTube channel and weekly podcast/discussion show, and while he’s very partisan his take is still interesting. As someone who’s been in the Presidential cabinet, he offers a unique “insider’s” take on presidential politics in particular, and his area of expertise is economics – something he also discusses a lot.
Number 10: The David Pakman Show
David Pakman is another podcaster and broadcaster in the same vein as Bryan Tyler Cohen, and occupies a similar left-of-centre, pro-Democratic Party position. Some of his takes can veer into “vote blue, no matter who” – an idiom I wholeheartedly disagree with, as I feel it gives cover to too many politicians who end up under-delivering! But Pakman’s take on the political news stories of the day is usually interesting and entertaining, and his coverage of the media and how the media talks about politics is generally very good as well.
Number 11: The New Statesman
The New Statesman started out life as a magazine, but now much of its content is online. Though the website/app itself is paywalled, unfortunately, there are regular YouTube uploads – one of which features ex-BBC political editor Andrew Marr. Marr’s pieces are often thought-provoking, and free from the confines of BBC impartiality, he’s no longer afraid to share some of his political leanings and opinions while covering one or two of the week’s big stories. As the UK general election gets closer, The New Statesman is one to follow.
Number 12: Leeja Miller
Another lawyer-turned-YouTuber, Leeja Miller talks about politics and the upcoming election in an interesting way. Her take often focuses on the law and the Constitution, and how the law and democracy are intertwined in the United States. Her video output can be quite eclectic, with pieces on topics as diverse as Watergate and the Alec Baldwin criminal case – but always with a legal and/or political focus. Miller is a great presenter, and clearly puts a lot of effort into researching the subjects she discusses. Not every video will be directly relevant to the election – but many are, and sometimes in unexpected ways!
Number 13: Let’s Talk Elections
For a YouTube channel run by a university student, Let’s Talk Elections is surprisingly thorough and well put-together. The slideshow format puts an emphasis on maps, data, and statistics – which, intentionally or not, makes the series feel professional and reliable. If I were to make a criticism it would be that opinion polls (upon which Let’s Talk Elections heavily relies for content) are not always reliable, and have arguably become less reliable over the past decade or so. So your mileage may vary in that regard! But Let’s Talk Elections videos are well-researched, well-presented, and informative.
Number 14: Ring of Fire/Farron Balanced
I’m putting these two YouTube channels together as they’re presented by the same individual and mostly talk about the same subjects. Presenter Farron Cousins can be very energised when talking about the political stories of the day – and that makes for an entertaining look at the news! There are occasionally other guests on the Ring of Fire programme, including a lawyer who often has an interesting take on Trump’s legal issues. Although I don’t agree with every one of Cousins’ takes on the news, he’s usually an interesting one to watch – on either of his channels!
Number 15: Election Night
I’ve loved staying up late to watch the election results as they come in for a long time! Election night programming can be absolutely riveting for a political geek like me, with pundits and analysts breaking down exit polls and trying to extrapolate paths to victory for the various candidates and political parties. We only get one of these every few years – but there’ll be two in 2024! I’ll definitely be staying up into the wee hours to watch as the votes are counted here in the UK and across the pond.
So that’s it!
The House of Commons during a recent session of Prime Minister’s Questions.
Those are my picks for what to watch in this election year. It’s far from an exhaustive list, of course; there are many other publications and content creators large and small who are well worth tuning in to see. I’m just getting started with TikTok (I’m old, I know) but there are several creators on that platform who are doing interesting things with a shorter format, and that’s just one example of another place to look.
As I said at the beginning, we all need to be aware of the biases and political leanings of the broadcasts and podcasts that we listen to – and try not to take any one source at face value. One of the nice things about platforms like YouTube is that it’s relatively easy to hop from one channel to another; to seek out different perspectives on the same story or political candidate. Many of you will already know which way you want to vote – and that’s good! But it can’t hurt to listen to what the candidates themselves have to say, as well as to hear different opinions from analysts, pundits, and podcasters as this contentious election year starts to jump into a higher gear.
I won’t tell you which way to vote. I won’t even tell you who you should listen to or trust. But I hope this list has, if nothing else, given you a place to start or suggested a new podcast or YouTube show that you might not have come across before.
Trekking with Dennis is not endorsing any political party or candidate here in the UK or in the United States. All podcasts, YouTube channels, and other content discussed above remain the copyright of their respective publisher, broadcaster, distributor, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek Beyond, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Rise of Skywalker.
Where do you stand on questions of “canon” in works of fiction? That’s the thorny issue we’re going to grapple with today!
The term “canon” as it’s applied to franchises and fictional universes today comes from the realm of theology, surprisingly enough. The first “canon” referred to the Bible, specifically to which books of the Bible were considered sacred and authentic. It has its roots in Latin, and is etymologically distinct from “cannon” – the large gunpowder weapons that we often associate with pirate ships.
No, not that kind of cannon!
In the context of fictional universes and modern entertainment franchises, the word “canon” has kind of taken on two meanings. Firstly, we have the authoritative list of which stories are the accepted ones in a particular series. And secondly, we have the meaning that we’re looking at in more detail today: how the word “canon” has been applied to individual story threads, narrative elements, and the minutiae of a fictional setting.
As more and more films and television shows have grown and been turned into ongoing franchises by their corporate overlords, the question of canon in its secondary meaning has come to the fore in fan communities. It’s worth noting that some fandoms have been wrangling with questions of canon for longer than others: Star Trek fans, for example, have been caught up in these kinds of debates for literally decades, as have fans of some comic books. Other franchises and fictional settings are new to the debate, prompted by new additions to their series, or in some cases, by corporate decisions that overwrite what had been previously established.
The Star Trek fan community has been caught up in these debates for decades!
Very few people would dispute that a film or television episode produced officially as part of a franchise is “canon.” That’s not really what we’re looking at today – though there are certain exceptions, such as how Star Trek: The Animated Series was “officially” considered to be non-canon for several years. Debates instead tend to focus on smaller story elements – the background of a character, how a fictional technology works, or whether Event A clashes in an irreconcilable way with Event B.
Some television shows – particularly comedy, but not exclusively comedy – tend to play very fast and loose with matters of canon. If a good joke requires a character to act completely differently, or even for an entire setting to be transformed, then these kinds of shows will do it. Why waste a good joke, after all? But other shows and films like to take themselves seriously, presenting their fictional worlds as big, persistent alternate realities in which audiences are invited to lose themselves. It can be jarring for some viewers when a new film or episode comes along that seems to challenge or even “violate” some aspect of what had been accepted as canon.
Questions of canon and consistency matter far less in a comedy series.
In fan communities – or at least, in those of which I’m aware – folks tend to fall into one of two rather rigid and well-defined camps.
On the one side are the “purists.” These people insist that the tiniest minutiae must be respected at all costs, and any perceived violations of canon must be given a satisfactory explanation. Overwriting or undoing an element of a story that had been previously established doesn’t usually sit well with canon purists.
Opposing the purists are the “don’t cares.” As the name suggests, these folks are completely uninterested in whether a story fits with the rules and backstories that have been established; as long as the story itself is entertaining, they’re happy to ignore such criticisms and concerns.
Some characters and storylines attract more criticism than others…
Canon purists will often argue that a story falls apart if the newest chapter doesn’t “respect” or fall in line with everything that has been previously established. On the other side of the debate, the don’t cares will argue that none of that matters and that they’re happy for the writers of a new chapter to take them on a different and unpredictable journey.
So where do *I* sit? What’s my answer to the canon conundrum?
The answer, as you’ve probably guessed, is that it’s a bit more complicated! I don’t buy into the black-or-white nature of this argument, and my position tends to be a bit more nuanced.
There’s no need to get into a fight…
Let’s define one more term: internal consistency. In the context of works of fiction, internal consistency has a fairly literal meaning: within the confines of a setting or fictional universe, basic rules are established that don’t change, in a fundamental or transformative way, from chapter to chapter or story to story.
Internal consistency is, for me, one of the essential pathways to suspension of disbelief. To give a couple of examples: if a fantasy universe establishes that magic works because magic users are born with innate magical power, the writers can’t arbitrarily change that later on to say that magic is actually something that anyone can learn from spellbooks. In a sci-fi setting, if we establish that a machine can travel backwards in time because it uses black hole technology, that also mustn’t be changed later to say that the time machine works by fusing together time-mushrooms in its engine.
The cultivation bay aboard the USS Discovery.
In short, canon matters because basic internal consistency matters. The fundamental building blocks of any fictional setting or world must remain consistent from one story to the next, and can’t be changed at the whim of the writers simply to force a particular story beat to fit. If that story beat can’t fit with what’s already been established because it clashes in an irreconcilable way with one or more of those building blocks, I believe it should be changed or even abandoned outright.
But that isn’t all there is to say.
When it comes to smaller things, like designs and aesthetics, I’m much more forgiving. If characters in a fictional organisation used to wear blue jackets, but in a new story they’re wearing red jackets… that’s not a “violation” of canon in my book. And that extends to smaller story beats, too. If a couple of lines of dialogue two seasons ago established that an event happened “200 years ago,” but a brand-new flashback shows the event happening 100 years ago – and it fits better with the story – then I’m content to let it slide. There are many, many cases where stories have technically “overwritten” something that had been hinted at or even explicitly stated, but the outcome ends up being positive.
Things like redesigns and visual overhauls don’t phase me.
These debates can often be incredibly subjective. Fans can be willing to overlook a change or disruption to canon if they like the outcome or if it takes place in a story they enjoy, even if they’d otherwise consider themselves to be sticklers for internal consistency. Likewise, fans who might otherwise have a more relaxed approach to canon might find themselves calling out inconsistencies or retcons if the story is unenjoyable to them for some other reason.
And it’s worth acknowledging that some changes to canon or retcons have just… worked. Although some Star Wars fans didn’t like it at the time, you’d struggle to find many folks in 2024 who are adamant that Darth Vader being retconned to be Luke Skywalker’s father is a bad thing that “ruined” The Empire Strikes Back. Or Trekkies who’d argue that the way the Borg changed in between their first and second appearances was to The Next Generation’s detriment.
Darth Vader’s revelation in The Empire Strikes Back is an example of a popular and well-received retcon.
Time is also a great healer. I wasn’t wild about Enterprise when it premiered, and some episodes in that show tripped over what had been established in Star Trek episodes set further along the timeline. Many Star Wars fans in the late ’90s and early 2000s felt that the prequel films messed up the franchise’s internal consistency… but those arguments have fallen by the wayside in the intervening years. Don’t get me wrong, you can still find fans who are bitter about these things, but the passage of time has paved the way for many folks to accept the changes that were made.
Speaking of the passage of time, it isn’t just modern entertainment franchises that have had to deal with this issue! Going all the way back to the end of the 19th Century, some readers of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories were mortified when the character was resurrected after his supposed “death” at the Reichenbach Falls. If these arguments have been raging for more than a century, what hope have we of resolving them now?
Sherlock Holmes’ survival proved controversial with fans in the 1890s…
At the end of the day, I’m happy to admit that I fall somewhere in between the “purists” and the “don’t cares.” Canon is important because a fictional setting needs to be basically consistent from one story to the next. Too many overwrites and retcons erode the fundamental building blocks of a world – bringing the whole story crashing down. I also don’t believe that new writers coming in to a long-established setting can or should have totally free rein to do whatever they want; they are, whether they wish to be or not, constrained to an extent by what has already been set up. If they can’t create a story within reasonable limitations… then they aren’t a good fit for that franchise, and their story should probably be discarded.
Having said all of that, though… I’m also not someone who’s a stickler for the minutiae of canon. If a new writer comes in with new ideas for a fictional world, I’m happy to give them the chance to tell their story and add to our understanding of that setting and its lore. Just because a particular character or event hasn’t been mentioned before… that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, and there are ways to interpret many stories that can include new additions without feeling like something has been entirely cancelled or overwritten. Retcons and changes can also work incredibly well, representing an improvement on the original story or idea in many cases. We don’t have to look far to find great examples of that.
The Star Trek franchise has some great examples of how changing canon can work.
At the end of the day, I want to be entertained. I return to a familiar fictional setting in part because I’ve enjoyed what writers and creatives have built and want to see more of it – so it can be jarring if a new story changes too many things too quickly, or seems to overwrite something I particularly enjoyed. But at the same time, a strong script, fun ideas, and high production values can win me over before too long. A new story that strikes out in an unexpected direction can keep me on my toes, challenge my expectations, and prove incredibly fun and engaging.
There is a time and a place for canon. Basic building blocks that are key to the functionality of a fictional world, or well-established origin stories for major characters are the kind of things that I feel either shouldn’t be challenged or that have a very high bar to overcome. But smaller things involving secondary characters, or the likes of designs and aesthetics, are absolutely fair game in my book.
Canon represents the “building blocks” of a fictional universe.
I hope this has been an interesting look at “canon.” This is a subject that I’ve touched on in other reviews, articles, and essays over the past few years, and it’s one that I’ve been meaning to delve into more deeply for some time. In fact, it’s been in my writing pile since I first set up my website more than four years ago. I’m glad to have finally been able to get around to it and try to explain where I stand!
Hopefully I’ve been able to get my point across as clearly as possible. This is a big topic, one that could easily be a whole series of articles with dozens of examples and anecdotes! I’ve tried to keep such things to a minimum this time, instead taking a “big picture” look at canon as a whole. But there may be time in the weeks and months ahead to dig a little deeper using some specific stories from across the world of entertainment.
And there’s no shortage of examples!
It’s been fun for me to finally put (metaphorical) pen to paper and tackle this question. Canon is a big deal for a lot of folks in fan communities, and I get that. There have been times over the years where I’ve felt that a story could’ve benefitted from staying true to canon a little more… and other times where I’ve felt that a story played it too safe, or that a retcon wouldn’t have gone amiss!
But I confess that I get a little tired of this black-and-white argument, with “purists” and “don’t cares” caught in a seemingly endless back-and-forth argument that never makes progress. We won’t always agree on what makes a good story – nor even on what the basic needs of a story are. That’s okay, and I share this piece with the world in that spirit. This is my subjective opinion on questions of canon – and nothing more. A lot of folks can and will disagree, and I’m totally fine with that. It’s up to all of us as individuals to decide what’s important and how we wish to approach entertainment franchises and fictional worlds.
All properties discussed above are the copyright of their respective company, broadcaster, distributor, or studio. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I love Christmas! And I don’t think it’s too early to say so. In fact, it was when I was beginning to put up my modest array of Christmas decorations that I began to think about how silly this conversation is about “Christmas creep” and the expanding holiday season. I decided to write down how I feel about it if for no other reason than to get my thoughts in order!
Not everyone likes Christmas – and across the world, billions of people don’t celebrate. That’s totally okay with me, and I’d never tell anyone that they should feel the same way about any holiday or time of year as I do. I’m not especially interested in Valentine’s Day or Easter, for example, and I really don’t like my birthday – I tend not to share my date of birth with people nor celebrate in any way. But Christmas is 100% my jam; this is the holiday I care the most about, and the time of year that I’m always looking forward to and happily welcome back.
A festive street light.
As with so many things online, the “debate” around Christmas and when it’s okay to start celebrating started out pretty casually and light-heartedly. But some folks seem to have started to take it unnecessarily seriously, with some even suggesting that people who put up their Christmas decorations before they deem it appropriate are somehow committing a horrible moral sin or doing something unacceptable.
I’ll share my two cents on decorating and you can see whether we’re close to being on the same page. Here in the UK, we celebrate Bonfire Night on the 5th of November – something you might remember from the film adaptation of V for Vendetta, if for no other reason! Bonfire Night doesn’t bring with it any decorations, but there are fireworks and – naturally – bonfires. Bonfire Night is the last noteworthy holiday/event (in my life as an English atheist, at any rate) before Christmas – so I consider any time after Bonfire Night to be “fair game” for putting up my Christmas decorations.
Decorating for Christmas.
I like to decorate my home. It’s fun to have something to look at, both inside and out, and I take any opportunity I can get to put up a string of fairy lights, banners, streamers, or really any kind of decorative items. With my Halloween decorations coming down in early November, there’s a bit of a void… and I like to fill that void by getting started on my Christmas decorations.
Maybe we’re getting a little philosophical or even psychological… but I’m someone who doesn’t like conflict, and I like to “live and let live.” If someone disagrees with me, even on a topic I care greatly about, I’d rather move the conversation along than get into an argument. I’m also the kind of person who’d never tell anyone that they’re doing something wrong – not unless it was literally a life-or-death kind of situation! “You do you, friend” is something I’ll often say – even if I vehemently disagree!
All aboard the Christmas Express!
So with all of that in mind, I’d never want to tell someone that the way they’re decorating their own home is somehow wrong or inappropriate. Some people begin to prepare for Halloween months in advance because they love that holiday a lot more than I do – and that’s fine. I’ve dated people who wanted to go all-out for Valentine’s Day, and even though it’s really not my favourite holiday, I was happy to go along with it for their sake. I guess I don’t really understand why so many people feel the need to butt in and give their totally unsolicited and uninvited opinions on Christmas decorating.
I saw a web comic once, a few years ago now, that said something to the effect of “some people don’t get a lot of joy or pleasure in life… so why try to rob them of it when they do find it?” And that’s kind of how I feel about this silly “debate” around decorating for Christmas. Some of the trappings of Christmas – the snacks, the decorations, and the twinkling lights – give me a small amount of pleasure at this time of year. And if someone wants to decorate for Christmas in August… why should you or I care? Why should we tell them that they’re being silly or childish? It seems mean… it feels almost like bullying.
Lights and baubles on a Christmas tree.
On an individual level, making a one-off remark about it being “too early” might seem inoffensive enough. But we have to try to keep in mind that, especially when we’re communicating online, the chances are that these comments have been made and seen before… time after time after time. And although it may seem harmless… that kind of thing wears you down after a while.
Christmas isn’t always the most fun time of year. I have memories of someone close to me who passed away in between Christmas and New Year that always come to the surface, and I know I won’t be alone in that. Christmas can, for people like myself who live alone, also be a very lonely time of year. When you don’t have anyone close to share your life with, holidays like Christmas can really feel like they’re rubbing it in sometimes! And those feelings impact me, too.
Children decorating a Christmas tree.
But in a way, that’s why decorating is so important to me. It helps me to remind myself of Christmases gone by, and to seek pleasure in the small things. I’m not going to have a big family Christmas this year – most of my close family members are gone, and others live too far away to visit on or around the big day. But I can still find things to enjoy about Christmas time: Christmas music, festive snacks, and of course, my decorations.
I’ve said before in totally different contexts that we should all try to be careful with our words when we hop online – and this is another one of those times. It’s totally okay to not enjoy Christmas, not to celebrate Christmas, and even to get irritated and annoyed if you see people getting ready for the holidays “too soon.” But there’s no need to call out someone for seeking a bit of joy and pleasure at this time of year – and since none of us can really know what anyone else might be feeling or going through, doing so could really upset someone or push them over the edge.
On behalf of people who like to put up their Christmas decorations before December: we get it! Some people think it’s “too early” and it shouldn’t be done. But how I choose to decorate my home – and how I choose to live – really isn’t anyone else’s business, is it?
Happy decorating… and a nice, early Merry Christmas from me to you!
Some images used above courtesy of Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Using an ad-blocker when heading online feels simultaneously like a cheat code and also something that’s absolutely essential nowadays. Ad-blocking browser extensions don’t simply prevent you from seeing ads, they also stop companies from tracking at least part of your online activity, including searches and clicks. Although it’s not something that gets discussed often, I’d go so far as to say that an ad-blocker is a pretty essential piece of software for anyone who wants to get a bit of extra privacy and who doesn’t want to see their data shared online. Obviously an ad-blocker on its own isn’t the only thing one needs to remain private and un-tracked online… but it’s a good, easy first step.
At the same time, though, ad-blockers fundamentally challenge the way in which a significant portion of the internet operates. The only way many websites can afford to remain online is because they’re funded by advertising revenue, and using ad-blocking extensions undermines that funding model. I have no sympathy for big corporations (as you’ll know if you’re a regular around here), but small businesses and community projects that rely on ad revenue aren’t things I’d want to see vanish from the internet.
Advertising is a major source of revenue for websites and apps.
YouTube has recently kicked off an attempt to crack down on ad-blockers, and it’s this effort that I wanted to talk about today – as well as talk about ads online and ad-blocking in a more general sense.
As YouTube’s position as the dominant video platform has been seriously challenged over the past three or four years, I can understand Google’s approach to ads and ad-blockers – or at least, I can recognise that there’s a perverse kind of logic to the corporation’s approach, even if I fundamentally disagree with much of what it’s doing. YouTube has been losing out to TikTok in particular, as well as other video sharing apps and websites, and that partially explains Google’s insistence on both serving up more and more ads to users and cracking down on ad-blocking.
If you use an ad-blocker, you might’ve seen this recently.
But Google is failing to learn not one but two vital lessons from the early days of the internet! The first is the “Streisand Effect.” By talking about ad-blocking, Google and YouTube are drawing attention to the existence of ad-blockers… and there are tangible, noticeable effects as a result. I don’t put much stock in Reddit as a bellwether of online discourse, but it’s at least noteworthy that the sub-Reddits for several well-known ad-blockers have seen massive increases in comments and subscribers since the YouTube crackdown began.
In short, Google and YouTube may be falling victim to the “law of unintended consequences!” By making a fuss about ad-blockers and trying to push ad-block users to ditch a useful piece of software, all they’ve managed to do is draw attention to the existence of ad-blocking software… causing more users, not fewer, to begin blocking ads on YouTube and other Google services.
The original “Streisand Effect” photograph. Image Credit: Copyright (C) 2002 Kenneth & Gabrielle Adelman, California Coastal Records Project, http://www.californiacoastline.org
The second lesson Google and YouTube seem to have missed is that of Napster’s demise. In the early 2000s, Napster was one of the first big file-sharing websites. People began sharing music online, and the recording industry tried to sue anyone and everyone involved. Napster was shut down after only a couple of years… but that wasn’t the end of file-sharing. Other applications immediately picked up where Napster had left off, and file-sharing is still available online to this day.
Even if YouTube were to manage to successfully disable or shut down all of the most prominent ad-blocking extensions and applications, more will arise to take their place. And even now, there’s a raging battle between Google’s army of coders and those who volunteer or work for ad-blocking applications. As soon as Google updates its code, ad-blockers find a way around it. There’s no end in sight and no obvious way for Google to strike a killer blow.
Logo for uBlock Origin – a popular ad-blocking extension.
There will always be people who want to get something for nothing, and who want to enjoy YouTube without ever seeing a single ad. That’s inevitable. But the rise in ad-blocking isn’t the fault of “greedy” consumers… it’s YouTube’s own fault.
Ads on YouTube used to be inoffensive enough. They’d show up once per five or six videos, there’d only be a single ad, and most ads were only a few seconds long. YouTube also allowed for many ads to be skipped after five seconds – and this combination seemed to be working well enough. It’s never fun to be served up an ad, but it wasn’t obtrusive and didn’t get in the way of the YouTube experience for most people.
An example of a skippable ad on YouTube.
But YouTube wasn’t content with that… despite raking in literally billions of dollars in ad revenue. Parent company Google began inserting more ads, longer ads, mid-video ads, and unskippable ads… all of which made the user experience noticeably worse. The delicate equilibrium between advertising and content became unbalanced, so is it any wonder people started looking for ways to skip or avoid the ads? YouTube brought this upon itself!
This is the first time in almost four years of writing on the website that I’ve so much as mentioned ad-blocking. By trying to crack down on ad-blockers, all YouTube has managed to do is draw attention to their existence, and call out its own piss-poor advertising situation. It’s the classic case of trying to squeeze users too hard: all YouTube will do is drive more and more people away from its platform and into the arms of gleeful competitors like TikTok.
TikTok has emerged as a major competitor to YouTube in recent years.
If ads on YouTube would go back to the way they were a few years ago, maybe the corporation would be able to convince more people to switch off the ad-blockers. But Google is trying to force users to sign up for YouTube Premium – a new subscription service that’s surprisingly expensive. This is a case of “invent a problem, sell a solution.” Google makes the ad situation on YouTube worse and worse, then offers to let folks pay to skip the ads. Ad-blockers are an existential threat to that business model.
If Google believes that it can win this fight… I think it’s wrong and it’s underestimating the resourcefulness of folks online. There may be small victories along the way – Google may shut down one ad-blocking extension, for example, ban ad-blocking on Chrome, or manage to re-code YouTube to temporarily prevent ad-blockers. But there’s a whole lot of determination on the other side, and as we’ve already seen so far in this fight, it’s never more than a few minutes before workarounds are discovered for whatever updates are rolled out to YouTube. Even if Google managed to score a big win and prevented all ad-blocking on YouTube… it won’t be long before cunning volunteers find a way around it.
There are a lot of people who are working to update ad-blockers and keep them functioning.
YouTube is not the juggernaut it once was. TikTok’s rise has seriously challenged its status as the leading video-sharing platform, especially among younger folks, and TikTok’s advertising situation seems to be a lot better and more user-friendly. I don’t use TikTok all that much, but having tried it out recently, I find ads on that platform far less annoying and far more tolerable.
At this point, doing anything to turn off users or push them away feels like a catastrophically bad decision for YouTube that could blow up in its face. The history of the internet is littered with once-massive websites and companies that failed to keep up with changing user attitudes… so there’s no guarantee that YouTube will just be able to coast on its current and past success and simply win by default. That didn’t work for MySpace.
Remember MySpace?
The internet and social media are constantly in a state of flux. It may seem that YouTube is in a dominant position right now – but the brief history of the web tells us that no website, app, or social media platform is unassailable. Doing anything to upset the apple cart while in that first-place position… it just isn’t a good idea. If YouTube was losing money hand over fist, unable to afford to keep the lights on, maybe this crackdown on ad-blocking would be more understandable. But we’re talking about a multi-billion dollar website backed up by one of the biggest tech companies on the planet.
YouTube’s own anti-consumer practices, coupled with the rise of TikTok and other platforms, have pushed people away at the precise moment that Google wants to rope them into long-term paid subscriptions. That’s unfortunate and puts YouTube in an awkward position, but I don’t think this is the right way to react. As Barbara Streisand found out when she tried to force a small photographer to take a picture of her house off the internet, calling attention to something only leads to more people becoming aware of it. YouTube and Google are drawing more attention to ad-blockers… and the result is articles like this one. I’ve literally never mentioned ad-blocking in almost four years of writing here on the website… not until Google and YouTube made it into an issue.
Google and YouTube seem determined to make ad-blocking into an issue.
At the end of the day, this is a fight YouTube won’t be able to win. They may score some successes along the way, and Google may even succeed at temporarily preventing ad-blockers on their platform. But it won’t be long before another ad-blocker pops up with a workaround. Look at what happened with Napster, LimeWire, and The Pirate Bay. Or look at how game developers and publishers are locked in a continual battle with pirates. No sooner has an anti-piracy tool been created than people are figuring out how to crack it and work around it. Spending a lot of money on these endeavours is ultimately fruitless – and it’s better for Google and YouTube to realise it now.
There’s also a very real legal question for Google and YouTube: are they even allowed to use software that detects ad-blockers? Scanning a user’s browser, extensions, or computer without permission is illegal in many jurisdictions, so these ad-blocker-blockers may not even be lawful. It would take someone with better legal knowledge than I to litigate that, though!
YouTube and Google may have fallen afoul of privacy laws.
So that’s the situation. YouTube is trying to push back against the small minority of its PC users who use ad-blocking software… but all that’s happened so far is a rise in the use of ad-blockers and more attention being drawn to ad-blocking. Volunteers working for popular ad-blocking extensions are easily able to shut down YouTube’s best efforts right now… and good for them.
I’d encourage anyone who wants to get a small bit of extra security and privacy online to seriously consider installing one of the available ad-blocking browser add-ons. You can manually “white-list” certain websites and apps, like YouTube, if you want to and if it feels important to you to contribute to smaller businesses and content creators.
As for YouTube’s prospects… I’m not so sure. The way people – especially younger people – consume media is changing, and YouTube’s status as the dominant video-sharing platform is already under threat. Maybe this clampdown on ad-blocking will succeed and will bring in a bit more loose change in the short-term, but beyond that? The future of online video platforms looks a lot more like TikTok and a lot less like YouTube.
Some images used above courtesy of Unsplash and Pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Back in 2021, I watched and generally enjoyed Amazon Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time adaptation. I’d read the first couple of books in the series, and although it was a long time ago and I couldn’t remember many of the details of the story, I was still interested to see what a studio with Amazon’s means could bring to the fantasy realm. In the aftermath of the success of Game of Thrones, many studios were scrounging around for fantasy properties to adapt! I was pleased with the result in 2021.
The Wheel of Time has just returned to our screens after a break of almost two years – and it’s this scheduling that I want to talk a bit about today. The Wheel of Time’s first season ran to a scant eight episodes, which isn’t out of the norm for streaming shows these days, but is still a lot shorter than a typical television show from years gone by. But a short run of episodes combined with a very long break in between seasons has meant that I’ve basically forgotten all of what happened last time – and I almost missed The Wheel of Time’s return entirely. It was only when I saw an advertising banner splashed across Amazon’s homepage that I even remembered the series existed.
Promo poster for The Wheel of Time Season 2.
This is far from an isolated example. Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power also ran for eight episodes in its first season – and also looks set to take a break of at least eighteen months before its second season will be ready. The same is true of shows like The Witcher and Stranger Things on Netflix or Paramount+’s Halo adaptation. These long breaks, when combined with short seasons, are actually doing a lot of harm to these shows – and I’m surprised that none of the big streaming companies have caught on yet.
The pandemic was a major disruptive force across the entertainment industry, shutting down or prolonging many productions. And I get that – I really do. The knock-on effects of that disruption are still being felt, and while that partially explains some of these long breaks, that’s not the whole story. Made-for-streaming shows like The Wheel of Time just aren’t interested in deadlines and schedules any more, and I think that’s to their detriment.
Still waiting on that second season of Halo…
Most viewers of any series are not hard-core fans. The vast majority of a show’s audience are casual viewers, folks who tune in while the show is running but don’t spend too much time thinking about it after the credits have rolled on the season finale. Those people basically pay for a production and determine whether or not it will be a success, so keeping them engaged is vitally important. It’s great when a show can be “made for the fans,” but the reality is that most viewers will never be in that hard-core category.
When a series disappears for almost two years, the way The Wheel of Time did, it makes it so much harder to retain the kind of casual audience that it relies on. I would generally consider myself to be someone who likes fantasy, and I ranked The Wheel of Time as being one of my favourite shows of 2021… but even I’m struggling to remember who’s who and what happened last time. It’s just been so long, and I’ve had other things to watch since. Sure, my ageing, addled brain isn’t as switched-on as some people’s might be… but that’s beside the point!
Who’s this again?
With shorter seasons of ten, eight, or even six episodes becoming increasingly common, it’s more important than ever for shows to not wait too long in between seasons. It’s also worthwhile, in my opinion, for streaming platforms to release shows at roughly the same time of year – at least the same season. There’s no need for rigid schedules on a streaming platform in the way there used to be on broadcast television, but if people get used to watching a particular show in the spring or the autumn, sticking with that for future seasons makes a lot of sense to me.
This must sound like a very long-winded way of saying “oops, I forgot that The Wheel of Time was a thing!” But this phenomenon goes beyond one single series or even one single streaming platform. There are perfectly understandable reasons for productions to be disrupted – whether we’re talking about the pandemic, the recent writers’ and actors’ strikes, or something else – and I’m not trying to single out Amazon or The Wheel of Time unfairly. I just really feel that these long breaks are to the detriment of practically every series and make it much harder to retain viewers.
SAG-AFTRA and WGA members on strike in 2023.
One of the benefits of the “streaming wars” over the past few years has been a glut of high-quality, big-budget entertainment on the small screen. Now I’ll be the first to tell you that not all of these shows were enjoyable, but some have been outstanding. With advancements in technology meeting a corporate need to drive and retain subscribers, the past few years have seen some of the best-looking television shows ever made. And that’s fantastic.
But when these shows disappear for years at a time – after only running to a handful of episodes – it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up. There’s a lot of choice of what to watch right now, even in genres that used to be considered small niches like fantasy. Studios like Amazon have to do better at keeping production and post-production schedules tight so that these kinds of long breaks can be avoided, especially if they only want to produce eight episodes in a season.
The Wheel of Time is produced by Amazon Studios.
So The Wheel of Time is back – and it’s already been renewed for a third season, so I guess we shouldn’t worry about the series being abandoned! But I hope Season 3 will be able to premiere in 2024, not 2025 or 2026. I’m only just beginning to figure out who’s who and what’s what all over again, and the last thing I need is for the series to disappear for nigh-on two years again!
As the streaming wars continue to rage, the studios that manage to get a grip on this situation will do well. Rigid schedules may no longer be necessary, and the flexibility that streaming allows for is, I would argue, a net positive for television production overall. But scheduling still matters, and taking two years to produce a single eight-episode season feels excessive. Worse than that, I fear it will prove harmful to any show’s prospects. Streaming services don’t only need to be concerned with signing up new subscribers, they need to worry about retaining current subscribers – and making sure that the shows people are watching don’t vanish for long periods of time is going to be part of that.
This was a bit of a whine; I’m sorry about that! And The Wheel of Time isn’t the only offender, it just happened to be the best recent example of this phenomenon. I do enjoy the series… I just hope I won’t have to wait so long for the next season. Time’s marching on, after all!
The Wheel of Time is available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video. Season 1 is also available for purchase on DVD/Blu-ray. The Wheel of Time is the copyright of Amazon Studios and Amazon Prime Video. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
It probably won’t shock you to learn that I wasn’t given a pre-release review copy of Starfield by Bethesda. Unlike some of the bigger Star Trek fan sites, I’ve also never been given pre-broadcast access to any episode or film by Paramount Global. I wonder why? But just because I like to style myself as “an independent media critic,” I have no entitlement to that access. Would it be nice? Sure! I’d appreciate it, I’d do my best to make good use of it, and I’d try to create a review or preview that my audience would find informative and useful. But I have no expectation of access – I’m one person running a tiny website on a small corner of the internet (and I don’t always review things in a timely manner), so who am I to demand access to any game, film, or television show?
Some outlets, however, seem to have an air of entitlement to pre-release access. When that presumed access is not granted, and review copies aren’t sent out, they proceed to get upset and write rather passive-aggressive articles and social media posts.
Some reviewers whine and sulk when they don’t get what they feel entitled to.
If you’ve been following the latest updates about Starfield, you’ll know which publication I’m referring to – but this article isn’t really about one game or one publication. The discussion around Eurogamer, Bethesda, and Starfield is just an opportunity to look at this interesting topic – and the answer isn’t as black-or-white as some folks seem to think.
To get this out of the way up-front: I used to know one of the editors at Eurogamer. We haven’t spoken in over a decade now, but we were on friendly terms once upon a time. It shouldn’t be relevant to the discussion, but because Eurogamer’s rather sour and sulky article prompted this piece, I thought it was important to let you know that I once had that friendship.
An excerpt from Eurogamer’s piece that prompted this article.
Onwards, then, to the minefield that is early access for critics and reviewers!
On the one hand, it’s entirely within a company’s purview to decide which publications are granted early access. Early access is not a right, it’s a privilege that a company chooses to bestow – and they can choose whether to share their content with massive publications like the New York Times, small-time YouTube channels with a few hundred followers, or anyone in between. They’re even welcome to send a review copy to Trekking with Dennis!
If a company doesn’t feel a publication’s review is worth their time, that’s up to them. They don’t have to share their content, whether we’re talking about films, games or television shows. And some publications, having gotten used to privileged access that the rest of us plebs don’t get, seem to have developed an attitude of entitlement. What makes a Eurogamer review “better” or more useful than a review published elsewhere? Absolutely fucking nothing. As the internet and social media have democratised media criticism, the importance of big publications – be they legacy media like newspapers or websites like Eurogamer that were once considered upstarts – is decreasing by the hour.
Remember when websites like Eurogamer were the young upstarts, challenging the “media establishment?”
But that’s obviously not all there is to say.
While a company isn’t obligated, either legally or ethically speaking, to provide pre-release access to critics, journalists, and publications… why wouldn’t they? If a company has confidence in its product, surely they’d want to ensure it received as many positive reviews as possible across as broad an array of publications as possible; doing so should mean that as many consumers as possible would see the positive buzz. Trying to conceal any product from reviewers is a bad look, and doing so makes it feel like the company lacks confidence in their game, film, or series.
Trying to prevent critics and reviewers from accessing a piece of media prior to release has been a fairly common scheme across the world of entertainment, and it’s usually meant only one thing: the work in question is not going to be held in high esteem. If a company feels that its product is going to receive negative reviews, ensuring as few people as possible see that feedback before making a purchase decision has a kind of unethical logic to it. In cases such as these, denying any kind of pre-release access is a way for companies to shield their product from criticism long enough to inflate sales numbers or viewing figures. It’s shady, it’s immoral, and it shouldn’t happen… but it happens all the time.
Corporations are going to look after their interests… by whatever means necessary.
To be honest, I don’t mind one bit when I see a smug publication or critic knocked down a rung or two by being denied pre-release access. As I said, there are some publications, websites, and social media “influencers” who have become arrogant, assuming that their relatively small audience means they’re entitled to receive things early, and that their review should be the gold standard. In a bloody-minded sort of way, it’s satisfying to see someone’s ego punctured as they realise they’re not entitled to any kind of special treatment.
But that’s a raw emotional response to the situation – one that I guess all of us should try to rise above! I haven’t, as you can tell, but maybe you can do better than me in that regard! Trying to reframe things and think less emotionally and more rationally, though, leads us back to the same conclusion: trying to shield a product from criticism, regardless of who the critic may be and whether or not they “deserve” to be taken down a peg, feels shady and even unethical. When a company knowingly and wilfully makes that decision, they’re making the assumption that the potential bad PR from shunning a publication or critic is worth the hit – presumably because they’ve pre-judged that their product will be torn to shreds in any review.
Denying pre-release review access can be a way for a corporation/publisher to shield a broken game from criticism until it’s too late. Pictured: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023)
This is one of those cases where it feels like corporations are skirting the spirit of the rules and getting away with it on a technicality. Yes, technically no games publisher, broadcaster, or film studio is obligated to submit their work to critics and reviewers prior to release. There’s no legal requirement and no way to force them to comply. And in an age of democratised criticism online and on social media, there’s an unanswerable question about where the “cut-off point” should be. Who counts as a “critic” when any old idiot can set up a website or a social media account devoted to talking about media? If companies were obligated to send out pre-release copies to everyone in that category… well, there’d be no one left!
But at the same time, deliberately denying access to certain critics and reviewers feels wrong, and hand-picking who is “allowed” to review something and who isn’t… that raises some pretty big ethical questions. Any company that has confidence in its product should be willing to subject it to review, and to ensure that reviews are available prior to release. The only way to make that happen is to provide critics with access and give them enough time to work.
Reviewers and critics need time to work.
In the case of video games, and especially large open-world video games, this realistically means that critics and reviewers need access several weeks ahead of time. A critic can watch a film in a couple of hours and make enough notes from two or three viewings to piece something together – but a video game can take a hundred hours or more just to play through once. If critics are to have any chance of publishing a review before launch day, that early access is essential.
There are too many instances of “big” publications in the video games realm working closely with publishers. And in recent years I’ve found that reviews from smaller outlets and individuals – as well as the general consensus from review aggregators like Metacritic – are far more valuable than anything churned out by a big publication. The relationships these publications develop with certain companies and publishers renders too many reviews impotent and unhelpful.
Metacritic’s page for Gran Turismo 7.
So this is a huge topic, one that we’ve really only scratched the surface of today. And while I absolutely come down on the side that says “companies need to provide more pre-release review access,” I won’t lie: there’s a part of me that loves to see big publications and arrogant, cocky “influencers” taken down a peg. No single publication or reviewer is that important, at the end of the day!
But as someone who dips their toes in the world of online media criticism, I think it’s important to talk about these issues as openly and honestly as possible. I’d rather see a hundred reviews and decide for myself which ones are worth my time instead of seeing ten curated reviews that a company or publisher hand-picked. If pre-release review access is only given to selected publications and critics, it raises a very important question: why were they chosen ahead of everyone else? What did the company hope to gain by choosing those critics and ignoring others? The answer, I fear, is simple: positive, glowing reviews.
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I don’t usually “do drama,” especially not when that drama involves YouTubers and “influencers,” but the monumental shitstorm engulfing Linus Tech Tips has been all over my social media feeds this week and I feel compelled to add my two cents.
If you’ve missed the news somehow, popular tech-entertainment channel Linus Tech Tips – and its parent company, Linus Media Group – has been embroiled in controversy. What started with a video from another tech review channel, Gamers Nexus, has ballooned into accusations of ethical issues with LMG’s reviews, conflicts of interest, mistreatment of a small company and their prototype product, and even reports from at least one former employee of a work environment so toxic that she resulted to self-harm before being forced out.
You may have seen this video among your YouTube recommendations this week. Image: Gamers Nexus
For some background, I’ve been a long-time viewer of Linus Tech Tips. I’ve been a nerd since, well, forever, and when I first started really getting into YouTube, visiting the platform more regularly and doing more than just looking up occasional how-to videos, Linus Tech Tips was one of the first channels that I subscribed to and would regularly tune in to watch. The hosts – Linus included – usually do a good job at making tech and computing topics accessible to the layperson, and while some of the humour isn’t my cup of tea and veers into being cringeworthy for its own sake, more often than not I’d find myself cracking a smile.
When I decided I was going to build my own PC for the first time, Linus Tech Tips was one of the main resources I consulted. I purchased at least one component for my PC – a CPU cooler, which we’ll discuss in more detail in a moment – entirely because it was highly recommended by Linus. I felt the channel and its hosts were trustworthy – and as someone who doesn’t have a ton of knowledge about tech, components, and the like, I don’t really have the ability of an organisation like Gamers Nexus when it comes to fact-checking the content that Linus Media Group has been putting out.
The Noctua NH-D15 as seen in a recent LTT video.
We’ve talked before about ethics among reviewers, and I’ve made clear that I don’t believe there can ever be such a thing as a “paid review.” There are reviews, in which a reviewer shares their thoughts and opinions on a product as best they can, and there are advertisements. Anything paid for is an ad, regardless of the terminology used, and Linus Media Group has, in the past, come close to skirting that line in my opinion. Taking paid sponsorships or selling ad space in a video is one thing, but dedicating an entire video to selling (sorry, “showcasing”) a product on a channel that also does supposedly-independent reviews… that kind of thing has felt uncomfortable for a long time, and is certainly absolutely useless from a consumer standpoint.
But at least those videos are flagged up as such, and even if I just skimmed a title or clicked without really paying attention, it’s usually obvious within a minute or two that a product “showcase” is, in fact, little more than an overly-long advertisement.
What’s been surprising to learn, at least for me, over the past week or so, is the extent to which LMG has become tied up with multiple big tech companies – companies whose products they subsequently review, and whose competitors products they also review.
An example of one of LTT’s sponsored “showcase” videos.
There is, as others have pointed out, a clear conflict of interest here. If Linus Tech Tips didn’t pretend to offer “reviews,” but rather stuck to product showcases, entertainment videos, and the kind of general mucking about that viewers have come to expect… I guess that would be okay. The deals between LMG and big companies like Intel and Noctua should still be stated up-front and not hidden, but at least there’d be less of an ethical minefield.
But Linus and co. seem to want to have it all.
In a small way, this has actually affected me. The PC cooler I mentioned, the one recommended so highly by Linus on his various channels, is manufactured by Noctua – a company that LMG has a financial relationship with. Now, I will state up-front that I’m not disappointed by the cooler’s performance in the PC that I built, but it’s made me stop to think. Would I have purchased that model, or even a model by that company, were it not for the strong recommendation from a tech influencer that I felt I could trust? And was Linus’ glowing praise for the Noctua cooler influenced in some way by his company’s financial ties to its manufacturer?
The Noctua cooler that I purchased was featured in a Linus Tech Tips video earlier this year.
To be clear (and because Linus himself has been quick to accuse critics of “libel” in the past) I’m not suggesting that Linus, LTT, or LMG deliberately misled me, nor that they fraudulently or dishonestly recommended me a product. I’m responsible for my own purchasing decisions, and it’s on me to seek out multiple reviews and do my own due diligence before making a financial commitment. But what I am saying is that, when there’s any semblance of a conflict of interest or any reason for a reviewer to look more kindly on a product… that’s a serious problem.
Here on my website, I mostly review films, games, television shows, and episodes of Star Trek. But if I were approached by, say, Paramount Global, and entered into a financial arrangement with that company, there’d be some degree of pressure – real, implied, or just purely imaginary – to keep that relationship going and to, for want of a better term, placate Paramount by glossing over the negatives and accentuating the positives in any future “review.” My reviews of Paramount’s films and TV shows would become suspect as a result – and even if I wasn’t making a conscious choice to look upon their content more positively, there’s a strong chance it would happen anyway.
“Shut up and take my money!” said multiple companies to Linus Media Group…
This is, for me, the crux of the Linus Tech Tips problem, and it’s one that LMG may find very difficult to overcome. Sure, the fact that some of their reviews were badly done or incompetently handled is a bad look – but that’s something that can be corrected, over time, with better quality control, enhanced video production procedures, and the like. And other tech channels, like Gamers Nexus, will be watching and will be ready to jump in and hold Linus’ feet to the fire if those kinds of mistakes and slip-ups happen again.
But the issue of trust is a much trickier and more nebulous one to resolve. Trust has been strained to breaking-point between Linus Tech Tips and many folks in its audience, and revelations of close partnerships and financial ties to big tech companies isn’t something that can be hand-waved away nor fixed in short order by internal changes at LMG. This is something that cuts to the very core of Linus Tech Tips’ content: can viewers trust what Linus and his co-hosts are saying about, well, anything?
Linus in a recent apology/explanation video.
No review is ever “entirely objective,” because that’s not how reviews work. There’s always a certain amount of one’s own thoughts, impressions, and biases present, even in reviews that promote stats and data above all else. So I don’t want to come across as asking for the impossible, because I know from my own experience that there simply isn’t such a thing as an “objective” review.
What makes a review valuable is the trust audiences have with the reviewer. I like to think that folks who come to Trekking with Dennis to read my film reviews or Star Trek episode reviews trust me to share my honest thoughts on what I’m seeing or playing, and trust that I have enough basic knowledge of the subject matter at hand to write something that’s at least worth their while. I also state in many of my pieces all over the website that I have no “insider information” or special access, and that I’m sharing my thoughts as openly as I can. That’s not to say I’m in any way free from bias, but I am independent. I don’t have financial ties to any of the companies whose films, games, or TV shows I review.
I like to think that my audience can trust my reviews of shows like Star Trek.
Linus Tech Tips can’t make that claim – and whether the hosts are “reviewing” a product from a company they work with or a product from one of that company’s competitors… there’s a very real danger of unconscious bias seeping into their content, making their reviews functionally worthless to consumers. If viewers are tuning in to watch Linus goof about, that’s fine and I guess no real harm was done. But for someone in the position I was in last year, looking for genuine product recommendations… there’s a pretty massive red flag being waved.
Linus Media Group can and should take on board the feedback provided by Gamers Nexus and their community. Slowing down their output, prioritising quality over quantity, and being willing to go back and edit videos or even re-film whole segments if mistakes were made are all pretty easy fixes; low-hanging fruit that should see significant improvements to the quality and accuracy of their videos going forward. For a company of LMG’s size and financial means, if making those kinds of commitments means either reducing their output or hiring additional staff, that won’t be an issue. The company is, quite remarkably for a YouTube outfit, worth tens of millions of dollars, in case you didn’t know.
Terren Tong, Chief Executive Officer at Linus Media Group.
But those changes are surface-level at best. The real issue of trust, and whether viewers can have faith in a review published by a company with such significant investments all over the tech space… that’s a whole different matter. And there’s no easy fix here – LMG has to decide what kind of company it wants to be and what kind of content it intends to create. If they’re going to stick to geeking out and mucking around, doing little more than playing with some of the fancy pieces of kit that they spend vast sums of money on, then I think they’ll be okay. But if they want to play at being reviewers and journalists, offering honest advice to consumers… the changes required to win back that kind of trust are much greater, and the will to make them simply may not be present.
How Linus Media Group responds to these criticisms in the days ahead will be telling, and I think it’s not unfair to say that Linus’ initial reaction to Gamers Nexus was poor – so catastrophically poor, in fact, that it fuelled the fire and made the situation noticeably worse. For me, this isn’t an issue of a simple inaccuracy, a mistake, waiting too long to correct a misstatement, or even that LMG is clearly running too hot and with the wrong priorities. My biggest takeaway from this whole sorry saga is that, at its core, LMG is too heavily involved with too many of the companies in the tech space whose products it purports to review. Whether intentional or not, those relationships are going to lead to bias, to conflicts of interest, and to making a review from LTT worthless.
An example of a graph produced for a Linus Tech Tips product review.
It goes without saying that a company should treat its employees with dignity and respect at a bare minimum, and I don’t want to ignore nor make light of the very serious accusations levelled at LMG by at least one former member of staff. Those accusations are, at time of writing, being looked into, and if they prove even close to true… LMG is going to be in for another huge wave of trouble to say the least. We’ve all had the misfortune of working for a toxic manager or boss at one time or another, and I extend my sympathies to the ex-employee in question.
Linus’ on-screen persona seems a million miles away from the accusations of sexism, ableism, and toxicity that have been levelled at managers within LMG… but if those accusations are borne out, quite frankly it could be a far worse situation for the company. Other famous YouTubers have been “cancelled” for comparably toxic behaviour, so no one, no matter how big of a fish they may be in their small pond, should consider themselves to be immune from consequences. These allegations from a former employee could prove far worse than anything Gamers Nexus presented and any of the trust issues I’ve been discussing above.
What comes next for Linus Tech Tips?
So that’s about all I have to say, really. This is a disappointing situation, but one that, if I’m being honest, I should’ve seen coming. There have been so many “showcases” and sponsored segments in LTT videos over the years that of course the company must have those deep relationships and financial entanglements. It’s on me that I didn’t really put two and two together until now.
Going forward, I’m not sure what I plan to do. Linus Tech Tips has given me a lot of enjoyment over the last few years, and even if there are conflicts of interest and financial arrangements that now make me question the usefulness of LTT’s reviews on a practical level, some of the channel’s other content – the videos focused more on entertainment and fun – may still be worth watching. However, I will be keeping my ear to the ground to see what comes of the investigation into the complaints raised by at least one ex-employee of LMG. If the accusations levied at LMG are even close to true, then I think I’ll be unsubscribing. There’s no place for such awful treatment of a fellow human being, no matter how “big” and untouchable you think you are.
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
If you haven’t already heard the news, then I’m sorry to report that Star Trek: Prodigy has been cancelled. The second season of the animated series is almost complete, but won’t be shown on Paramount Plus. If Paramount can’t line up another network to broadcast it – and on past form, they may not try very hard – then it’s not outside the realm of possibility that we won’t see it at all. Let’s talk about Prodigy and the absolutely pathetic decision-making at Paramount that led us here.
I’ve been ringing alarm bells about Prodigy’s prospects since before the show even aired a single episode. There were several big hurdles that got in the way of Prodigy, and all of them are entirely Paramount’s fault. The first was the choice of platform: Paramount Plus simply isn’t a streaming service with a lot of content made for kids. As such, it isn’t a platform that many kids or young people would have had access to, limiting Prodigy’s potential audience long before the show was even broadcast.
Promo poster featuring the main characters.
Considering that Prodigy is a co-production between CBS and kids’ broadcaster Nickelodeon – both of which are wholly owned by Paramount – this never made any sense to me. Nickelodeon was the perfect home for Prodigy, and the series could have joined a decent lineup of shows aimed at a younger audience. It wasn’t until almost a year after Prodigy premiered that the series debuted on Nickelodeon. Paramount Plus simply isn’t a big enough streaming service, nor one with much appeal to a younger audience, meaning the choice of platform was a weight around Prodigy’s neck from day one.
Then we have some absolutely appalling scheduling. Prodigy debuted in October 2021 with a feature-length premiere. But after that, only three more episodes would be broadcast before the show took a seven-week break. There wasn’t enough time for Prodigy to gain traction with its audience – and especially with a younger audience – before it simply disappeared. Paramount has fucked up the scheduling of Star Trek in general, but Prodigy’s messy launch is perhaps the corporation’s single most egregious scheduling mistake.
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish, one of the morons most responsible for the state of the corporation.
After its hiatus, Prodigy again only premiered five new episodes before taking an extended break – this time from February 2022 all the way to October. If any kids were still watching at that point… well, they were unlikely to stick around for eight months while the show disappeared. The second half of Season 1 ran from October through to December 2022, and was the only time where Prodigy actually got a decent run of episodes.
By the time the show returned from its extended break, though, it seemed pretty obvious that the only people watching were hard-core Trekkies and a few of their kids.
The crew of the Protostar in Season 1.
Prodigy was cut off from an international audience from the start, with no effort made to broadcast the show outside of the United States. Even in the few places where Paramount Plus existed, episodes of Prodigy weren’t always shown. In Australia, for instance, paying subscribers to Paramount Plus didn’t get to watch Prodigy in full at the same time as American subscribers.
In the rest of the world, including here in the UK, things were even bleaker. Despite the Nickelodeon channel existing in some form in more than 100 countries and territories around the world, Paramount stupidly stuck to its “America First” fetish, only showing Prodigy on Paramount Plus in the United States and ignoring all messages and requests from fans.
Trump would be proud.
This approach will never work. In the 2020s, the internet and social media are one massive worldwide audience. Cutting off more than 90% of the world from a new television show is a catastrophic decision. It means that the hype bubble collapses, there are far fewer conversations on social media, hashtags don’t trend, posts don’t get likes, advertisements don’t get noticed – and then no one turns up to watch. This impacts the show in the United States – and it’s what happened with Prodigy.
Because Prodigy was on an obscure second-rate streaming platform, one that had no reputation with audiences as being a platform for kids’ shows and children’s content, because it was cut off from a worldwide audience and got precious little attention and chatter online, and because it was scheduled in such an appalling, idiotic manner, there was never any hope for the series. The only surprise here is that Paramount dragged it out this long.
Prodigy was a Paramount Plus exclusive.
The lack of toys and tie-in merchandise was just another nail in Prodigy’s coffin. The way kids – especially younger kids – engage with any property is through imaginative play. Star Trek toys would have kept Prodigy alive in the minds of its young fans in between episodes – and during the aforementioned breaks in the schedule. Furthermore, seeing toys being played with by friends or even just on shelves at the local toy shop would have inspired at least some kids to seek out Prodigy and give it a try for themselves.
I’ve shared this story before, but one of my earliest Star Trek memories isn’t an episode or a film, it’s a toy phaser. When I was perhaps as young as seven or eight, I remember seeing my uncle – who boasted an impressive collection of nerdy merch – showing me a phaser pistol from Star Trek. Before I’d even watched a single episode, I remember being intrigued by the phaser pistol and having fun pushing its button, watching it light up and make a noise.
A handful of Prodigy toys were belatedly launched in 2023.
Prodigy must be the only kids’ show in the world in 2023 to have had no tie-in products associated with it for the entirety of its first season. The lack of merchandise didn’t just prevent kids who were already fans of the show from having something to play with, it actively harmed Prodigy’s prospects and is another factor in its failure.
The truth is that Paramount didn’t give Prodigy a fair chance. Despite having so many opportunities to make this show a success, Paramount’s leadership has once again demonstrated that it isn’t fit for purpose. 20th Century thinking is trying – and desperately failing – to lead the corporation into the 21st Century, but the media landscape has shifted so much that these people don’t know what they’re doing. Prodigy’s cancellation follows Discovery’s a few months ago – and despite promises of new content, things don’t look good for either the Star Trek franchise or Paramount Plus.
Tom Ryan, President and CEO of streaming for Paramount Global.
Prodigy had the potential to open up Star Trek to a new, younger audience. The only way the franchise can survive long-term is to bring new, younger fans on board. If Star Trek remains the nostalgic preserve of people like me, it won’t survive – and it won’t deserve to. It’s bitterly disappointing that the series didn’t achieve that objective… but it’s even more disappointing that its failure is entirely the fault of pathetic decision-making by Paramount leadership.
It’s imperative that Paramount learns the right lessons from this clusterfuck. It would be easy to say “let’s never make another kids’ show,” but that would be absolutely the wrong way to react. Prodigy didn’t fail because it was aimed at kids – it failed because Paramount had no idea what to do with it. Scheduling, the choice of platform, the lack of toys, failure to make use of existing child-friendly channels, the lack of an international broadcast… all of these factors contributed. And the blame for all of them lies at the door of Paramount’s board and executives.
It’s Paramount’s fault that Prodigy ended up here.
There were story issues in Prodigy, too, which may have been a factor. The show leaned heavily on the legacy of Voyager – and not just because of the inclusion of Captain Janeway. Prodigy’s story was, in many ways, a Voyager sequel, and it introduced characters and story threads that may have been too complicated or convoluted for a young audience who were unfamiliar with older iterations of Star Trek. That’s a creative decision, and one that I enjoyed – but I’ve been a Trekkie for more than thirty years. I watched Voyager when it aired, I bought the whole series on DVD, and I’ve watched most episodes more times than I can count.
Maybe, in retrospect, we’ll have to call into question the decision to have Prodigy rely on Voyager to such an extent. Maybe it would have been better to allow the show more freedom and to have it stand on its own two feet. Might that have harmed Prodigy with some Trekkies? I suppose so… but it could have opened it up to a new audience, and wasn’t that supposed to be the point?
Was it a mistake to rely on Voyager to such an extent?
At the end of the day, though, this is Paramount’s fault – there’s no two ways about it. Decisions taken by executives at the top cut off Prodigy from the very audience it was supposed to attract, and the show simply never found a foothold outside of existing Trekkies and a few of their kids. With no international audience, with episodes shown in short, random batches on an obscure streaming platform, and with no toys or merchandise… there was no hope for Prodigy.
A Star Trek kids’ show was a brilliant idea. And Prodigy had some wonderful voice acting, stellar animation work, and some engaging, emotional storytelling. But it was sabotaged so thoroughly by the idiots at Paramount that one would be forgiven for thinking their actions were deliberate. Surely no group of executives with dreams of running a media corporation could be so utterly, irredeemably stupid… right? But that’s the reality of working with Paramount, I guess.
The abandoned wreck of the Protostar feels like a fitting image for this occasion.
Paramount needs a good clear-out. Failed leaders need to be ousted and the corporation’s attitude adjusted. Priorities need to be re-examined, and the long-term future of streaming needs to be urgently addressed. Paramount Plus is losing money by the boatload – and that seems unlikely to change in the short-term. Will it survive the decade? Will it last until Star Trek’s 60th anniversary in 2026? Will it still be here at Christmas?
Make no mistake, Prodigy won’t be the only casualty here. Unless and until Paramount can get its act together, these failures will continue to happen. With two of Star Trek’s five shows being cancelled within months of each other, and with Paramount Plus continuing to flop around like a dying fish, fears for the franchise’s longer-term prospects – and the prospects of shows like Strange New Worlds, which is currently paused due to an ongoing writers’ strike – only grow. I wish I had confidence in Paramount’s leadership to steady the ship and sort things out.
The Star Trek franchise – including all properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
If you’re a Netflix subscriber, there’s a major change coming to the subscription service that you may need to take note of. Netflix has begun rolling out a new update that is supposed to clamp down on “password sharing,” i.e. where people in different households share a single Netflix account. What this means is that if you have relatives or friends who use your Netflix login, things are going to get a lot more complicated.
Essentially, Netflix will begin forcing all of its users to designate one network as their “home” network, and all devices using that Netflix account will have to log in on that home network at least once a month. If they don’t, or if Netflix’s algorithm suspects that there’s a case of “freeloading,” as the company has insultingly termed it, additional verification may be required – such as entering a code sent to the registered email address.
Look at that little freeloader. Makes me sick…
There is a solution, though, for all of you “freeloaders” out there! Netflix will very generously allow you to continue to share your password – for a fee, naturally. In Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica, where this scheme is being trialled, the additional charge will be $2.99 (approx. £2.44 here in the UK). Inventing a problem or inconvenience in order to sell a solution is a business model as old as time itself, but there are good reasons to think that it won’t work in this case.
The mistaken assumption that Netflix is making is the same fundamental misunderstanding that the music industry made in the early 2000s when Napster and other sharing sites first rose to prominence: that for every password shared, they’re missing out on a subscriber. The music industry incorrectly assumed that every download was akin to a CD not being sold, and Netflix is making the same basic mistake more than twenty years later.
Netflix is making the same mistake as the music industry did in the early 2000s.
This is desperation from Netflix, as the company clearly has no idea how to gain more subscribers in an increasingly competitive streaming market. Rather than trying to reach new groups of people by creating or licensing films and shows that would appeal to them, Netflix is banking on the flawed notion that this crackdown will lead to millions of new subscribers. It won’t.
Most folks who access Netflix via a friend or family member’s account won’t magically be transformed into new subscribers by this move. And the aggressive, insulting way that the company has approached it is even likely to turn people away – being compared to pirates and being called “freeloaders” is not a great way to win support for what was always going to be a controversial move.
It must be some kind of visual metaphor…
Netflix has been upset with password sharing for a long time, but the truth is that it has been a huge benefit to the company. It’s very hard to put a price on the kind of chatter and buzz that some of Netflix’s shows have attracted on social media, and in part that’s been possible because of, not in spite of, password sharing.
Let’s break it down. Password sharing means more folks have access to Netflix – potentially tens of millions more people are able to watch the shows and films that Netflix has created and licensed. Practically all of those folks use social media, and when they see something they like, they hop online to talk about it. Hashtags trend on Twitter, Facebook posts get more likes, Instagram pictures get more comments, and so on. The resultant online buzz hypes up shows, leading to more and more people becoming aware of them, wanting to watch them, and in turn, signing up for Netflix.
Netflix’s Wednesday is one example of a series that blew up thanks to social media.
Netflix shows as diverse as Wednesday, Tiger King, and Squid Game have all blown up in the last few years. Why is that? Because of the conversations they prompted on social media, with many “freeloaders” joining in those conversations, amplifying them, and spreading Netflix’s brand to a wider audience. This is the power of social media – and doing anything at all that cuts off potential viewers can be catastrophic.
I’ve made this exact same argument from the other side in relation to Paramount+ and the Star Trek franchise. Because Paramount+ has been so slow to arrive in practically every country outside of the United States, it’s been much, much more difficult for any of the platform’s shows, including the renewed Star Trek franchise, to gain much attention online. Because most folks can’t watch these shows, they don’t talk about them. Hashtags don’t trend, posts reach a smaller audience, and the resultant lack of online chatter harms Paramount+ in the United States as well as around the world.
Paramount+ already has this problem, and Netflix should take note.
Netflix is about to make the same mistake. By cutting off potentially tens of millions of viewers from its platform, Netflix won’t only fail to pick up new subscribers, it’ll almost certainly see its big investments fall well short of expectations. It will be much more difficult in the months and years ahead for another Wednesday or Squid Game to take the online world by storm, because with an audience that’ll be tens of millions of people smaller, those shows won’t gain as much attention.
We’ve been able to see for a long time that the streaming market is becoming oversaturated, with too many corporations all chasing the same audience using the same business model. Quite a few of these streaming services are not long for this world, and by the end of the decade – if not sooner – we should expect to see many failures and closures.
We should expect to see more streaming services go the way of CNN+ in the months and years ahead.
Netflix felt like a behemoth, an unassailable juggernaut at the pinnacle of the streaming game. And why shouldn’t it? Netflix was the pioneer of this business model, and its success is what directly led to the creation of Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+, and many of these other platforms as they sought to imitate its success.
But Netflix has become vulnerable, and this attempt to clamp down on “freeloaders” shows just how desperate the company is. Its position as the market leader has been challenged, and its ongoing success is no longer assured. It’s not inconceivable any more that Netflix might end up as one of the casualties in the “streaming wars” – something that would have seemed impossible not so long ago.
Netflix’s old logo.
Netflix needs to walk this back and apologise – today, if possible. Treating its own audience so badly, with terms like “freeloaders” being thrown around, is appalling, and this money-grubbing move was always destined to end in failure. Netflix is in a better position than many companies in this market, and is still a synonym for “streaming” in many households. But even brand names that are so well-known that they enter the popular lexicon can still end up failing – just ask Skype about that!
For a long time, Netflix was almost the default streaming platform that people would pick up. A good mix of films, television shows, original content, and more was a tempting offer – especially for the price. But as Netflix continues to jack up its prices and behave in ways that aren’t consumer-friendly (to say the least) its reputation is slipping. As more companies enter the market – and crucially, reclaim or even buy back their own properties – Netflix feels diminished. This attack on password sharing is a symptom, not the root of the problem.
Netflix is an increasingly expensive platform in a crowded market.
I dumped my Netflix subscription last year, when the platform lost the Star Trek franchise to Paramount+. There haven’t been many Netflix projects in that time I felt were must-watch events… and that’s the platform’s biggest problem by far. It needs to get a good mix of older and newer content, and create shows that people actually want to watch. Cancelling popular shows because they didn’t generate new subscribers in large numbers is kind of missing the point – Netflix is in a position right now where retaining current subscribers, and convincing lapsed ones to rejoin, is a much more pressing concern.
So that’s what’s going on. Be aware that Netflix plans to implement this change if you still use the platform, and it’s probably also worth keeping an eye on the streaming market. It could be a very interesting year!
Wait… does this mean there could finally be an opening for Paramount+ to take the world by storm? Nah!
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
This article deals with the sensitive subject of transphobia and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
When the Harry Potter books emerged in the late 1990s, I missed out on the craze at first. It was only around the time of the third book in the series that I was convinced to check them out; it had become an unavoidable phenomenon by then, and even though I was outside of the nominal target age range and had long since moved beyond kids’ stories, I felt that the Harry Potter stories were good fun and had a lot to offer. I even went as far as to pre-order a couple of the remaining titles, reading them as soon as they were available.
Although I was never “in” the Harry Potter fan community, I definitely held the books in high regard, and when the films came along I enjoyed those as well. Harry Potter became a point of pride, in a way, as a British person; in an entertainment landscape so utterly dominated by the United States, Hollywood, and American films and television shows, here was a distinctly British entertainment property that was taking the world by storm.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
When the Harry Potter film series came to an end at the beginning of the last decade, so too did my involvement with the franchise. I found the first Fantastic Beasts film to be poor, I wasn’t in a position to be able to see the Cursed Child stage play, and although I’d still have said that the films and books were decent, I was in no rush to go back and re-read or re-watch any of them. Harry Potter had come and gone for me – as indeed it had for most of its audience outside of the hard-core fandom.
The recent conversations around JK Rowling, prompted in large part by the upcoming video game Hogwarts Legacy, have dragged up the Harry Potter series for me, though, and it’s fair to say that my feelings have changed a lot since I first sat down to read the books more than twenty years ago. JK Rowling has leveraged the fame and money that Harry Potter brought her to go to some pretty dark places, and as a result I’m one of a growing number of people who can’t support, enjoy, or take part in the Harry Potter series, Hogwarts Legacy, or anything else related to it any longer. In this piece I want to explain, as best I can, why I feel that way.
Upcoming video game Hogwarts Legacy prompted this conversation.
First of all, I believe that each of us has an inalienable right not to be compelled, forced, or shamed into supporting a company, product, or public figure when what they say and do conflicts with our values and beliefs. This applies to conservatives who say they won’t support “woke” corporations and it applies equally to anyone who doesn’t want to lend their support to companies and individuals who express homophobic, transphobic, and other kinds of bigoted views. Whether we agree or disagree with someone about the importance of an issue, the fact remains that we all have the right to determine what’s important to us, where our values lie, and to try – insofar as possible in a corporate capitalist system – to avoid companies and entities that don’t share those beliefs and values.
This is the very definition of “voting with your wallet.”
It doesn’t have to be explained in such lofty philosophical terms, but this is basically what it boils down to. For some folks, JK Rowling’s transphobic public statements, her continued financial support for transphobic organisations, campaigns, and causes, as well as other decisions she’s taken and statements she’s made mean we don’t want to support Harry Potter, Hogwarts Legacy, or anything else in the franchise.
JK Rowling at the White House circa 2010.
Now I’d like to get into some of the reasons why I came to the decision to undertake what essentially amounts to a boycott of Hogwarts Legacy and Harry Potter.
I first started to feel uncomfortable with the way JK Rowling was treating the franchise when she began going back to the books and clumsily tried to insert characterisations and narrative elements that were simply not present – nor even implied to be present – in the original work. She seemed to be doing this for “internet points;” for the clout of being able to claim that she had actually created a series that was more progressive than it truly was.
What Rowling was attempting to accomplish with an unsubstantiated claim that, for instance, the character of Dumbledore was gay, was to award the Harry Potter series – and herself as its author – further prestige and recognition that was unearned. At a time when Rowling’s other endeavours were failing to come anywhere close to recapturing the magic (no pun intended) of Harry Potter, making very public statements about her only genuinely successful work was a way for her to retain a level of attention and relevance – and by keeping a spotlight on Harry Potter at a time when many of the series’ more casual readers and viewers were drifting away, it was a way to try to keep the cash flowing.
JK Rowling went back to the Harry Potter series and tried to arbitrarily insert character traits that didn’t exist.
Long before JK Rowling started down a path that would lead to overt transphobia, I think it was pretty obvious that she was someone who was struggling to let go of Harry Potter. By returning to the series to put out a sequel in the form of a stage play, signing another deal with Warner Bros. to make films based on the book Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and having the online forum/community Pottermore created, Rowling signalled both a desperation to stay in the spotlight and a cold-hearted greed as she sought to keep the money coming in.
But during this period, Rowling was more a figure of fun than anything harmful. Sure, it wasn’t great to see her trying to almost arbitrarily assign new sexualities and other traits to characters in the Harry Potter books, but it came across more as pathetic attention-seeking than anything malicious. Rowling saw that the LGBT+ movement was advancing, felt that the lack of open or even implicit LGBT+ characters in Harry Potter was hampering its ongoing success, and tried to remedy that in a pretty shameless way. It was sad, almost pitiable… but something I felt was, at most, worthy of being joked about.
JK Rowling with Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe, and Emma Watson in the early 2000s. Image Credit: IMDB
JK Rowling’s very first public step down what we now know to be a transphobic path seemed pretty innocuous at first. I actually interpreted her Twitter post – in which she responded to an article by Devex that used the phrase “people who menstruate” – to be harmless wordplay. People who write a lot often like to play with words, as I can attest, and by sarcastically responding to the post it seemed, for a moment at least, that what she was doing wasn’t anything serious.
But over the following months and years, Rowling has clearly become increasingly transphobic.
Let’s define what we mean by “transphobia” so there are no misunderstandings. Someone who is transphobic has an irrational hatred toward transgender and gender non-conforming people. In this context we aren’t using “phobia” to refer to a fear, but to refer to dislike, disapproval, prejudice, discrimination, and/or hatred. And to be especially clear: if someone says they believe that transgender people, and trans women in particular, should be “treated with dignity,” but then refuse to even accept that transitioning is possible or oppose laws that would affirm someone’s true identity, they are transphobic. Saying they believe in treating people with “dignity” has become a buzzword in some right-wing circles, but if they can’t back up that word with any meaningful action, then it’s nothing but cover for something overtly harmful.
I hope we’re clear on our definitions now.
One half-serious Twitter post that may have been tone-deaf does not constitute transphobia, although it clearly hinted at a deeper dislike or disapproval of transgender and gender non-conforming people. But if that had been Rowling’s sole contribution to the debate, or if she had walked it back, apologised, or even simply ignored transgender issues thereafter, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But she didn’t – when faced with pushback, she doubled-down.
Although JK Rowling had begun to lose her status as the Harry Potter series slipped out of the mainstream cultural conversation, she was still someone who was held in high regard. She’d become far less important as Harry Potter began to be eclipsed by other, newer franchises, but if you had asked almost anyone throughout the 2010s about JK Rowling, chances are you’d have heard them say something positive about her – or at least about the Harry Potter series. This pushback that she got for her initial transphobic post was the first time since becoming a household name that she’d gotten any kind of major criticism in public – and it clearly had a huge psychological impact on her.
JK Rowling’s Twitter post from June 2020.
Rowling’s initial beliefs about sex, gender, and gender identity may be understandable, to an extent, because of the era in which she was born and the society in which she was raised. Even when I was at school in the ’90s, “sex education” lessons entirely excluded any mention of homosexuality, and the idea that someone could transition from one gender to another was never even discussed in any health or even biology lesson. If transgender people were mentioned at all, it was for the sake of mockery; “trannies” were the butts of jokes and figures of fun, and nothing more.
Some people of my generation still cling to those beliefs even as science and society have moved on in leaps and bounds – but thankfully, better education, increased awareness, and more scientific and sociological research into sex, gender, and gender identity have already changed minds. Unfortunately, though, people are using JK Rowling’s public and vocal transphobia to try to push back against the societal acceptance of trans people – and even to attack legislation that protects trans rights.
A protest in the UK in January 2023. Image Credit: Sky News
Rowling herself has become the figurehead of this movement, and the current Conservative government in the UK has been able to turn the question of trans rights into what is insultingly termed the “trans debate,” in part using Rowling and others like her as cover for some seriously harmful legislation that either seeks to block the advance of trans rights in the UK, or in some cases, actively rolls back pre-existing trans rights.
This is the real crux of the JK Rowling problem: her status and wealth have allowed her free rein to spearhead one of the worst and most aggressive anti-trans campaigns anywhere in the western world, lending undue legitimacy and standing to a point of view that is mostly shared by a bizarre coalition of religious fundamentalists, paleoconservative reactionaries, and internet trolls. At a time when LGBT+ rights were advancing across the board, Rowling stepped in and has actively worked to push back against those rights, scoring some successes as the current Conservative government and its allies use her and the people who support her as a shield.
The current Conservative government in the UK is keen to oppose and roll back trans rights.
This is why I can’t “separate the art from the artist,” as some folks have suggested. Because what JK Rowling is doing is still happening and is continuing to actively cause harm to trans people, I find myself in a position where I can’t support the Harry Potter franchise. Moreover, with Rowling retaining ownership of the franchise, any purchase of books, films, video games, and other merchandise gets her a cut of the proceeds – and as we’ve just been discussing, Rowling uses some of her money to provide financial support to transphobic campaigns, causes, and organisations. I feel that making any new purchase of Harry Potter merchandise, at this time, is akin to donating to such causes myself – something I would categorically never do.
Last time we talked about JK Rowling we touched on this concept, which is referred to in some academic circles as “the death of the author.” Taken from the title of an essay by French critic Roland Barthes, “death of the author” is primarily about discovering one’s own interpretation of a published work independent from the original intent of the author and who they are or were – but I would very strongly argue that it doesn’t apply in this case, and that separating JK Rowling from Harry Potter is impossible as long as she remains in control of the franchise and continues to monetise it.
It isn’t possible to separate JK Rowling from Harry Potter.
There are plenty of authors and other creators whose work I would also choose not to support under similar circumstances – but they’re either long dead, no longer actively involved in their franchise, or their franchise has been taken over and moved on. This is the key difference, and while there are many, many creative people who were unpleasant or even harmful during their careers and lifetimes, JK Rowling is continuing to cause harm to her targets right now.
I also found some of JK Rowling’s recent attacks on the Harry Potter fan community to be pretty distasteful, showing how little respect or appreciation she has for the people who quite literally gave her the position and power that she’s wielding. In her recent book The Ink Black Heart, Rowling clumsily inserts a character as a stand-in for herself, then makes that character the target of an angry and murderous mob stemming from an online fan community. The book, much like everything else Rowling has tried outside of Harry Potter, got mixed reviews and didn’t sell especially well. But the intent was there – and Rowling has shown her true colours, sneering at and judging the very people who made her who she is.
The Ink Black Heart got mixed reviews.
One interesting thing that has come out of this whole unfortunate mess that is to the overall good, I feel, is a reevaluation of JK Rowling’s work and the Harry Potter series in particular. While the setting of Harry Potter captured the attention of a worldwide audience, there’s a reason why it’s always still referred to as “Harry Potter” instead of its official title: “the Wizarding World.” The world of Harry Potter doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and without its titular characters and the admittedly engaging story that they were part of, it doesn’t feel as though there’s anything else of substance there.
Look at franchises like Star Trek or Star Wars – deep world-building created rich, lived-in settings in which characters could get lost, where their skills and talents mattered and could be applied to any number of roles in those universes. Harry Potter, in contrast, is both shallow and inconsistent; a cobbled-together mix of English folklore, tropes of the fantasy setting, and even elements and narrative beats directly plagiarised from other literary works. It invented practically nothing new, and its few original elements are actually its weakest points. As a setting and a fictional world, it doesn’t survive more than a cursory glance.
The “Wizarding World” is not a well-constructed setting.
And that’s totally fine. Not every author can be brilliant, not every fictional setting can be wonderfully rich and deep, and for its intended purpose and target audience, there’s nothing wrong at all with the setting of the Harry Potter books. But it does raise a wry smile when I hear people leaping to its defence, claiming it’s a unique and brilliant fictional setting comparable with the likes of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. It isn’t… and it was never meant to be. JK Rowling simply doesn’t possess the talent to create something anywhere close to that level.
There are some deeply troubling and problematic depictions within the Harry Potter books, too. Goblins who run the Wizarding World’s banks – and who are set to be a major villainous faction in Hogwarts Legacy – clearly and obviously draw on anti-semitic tropes and stereotypes. The Wizarding World practices slavery, enslaving “inferior” house elves to do the bidding of witches and wizards. And when, in the books, a character tries to point this out and campaign against it, she’s ridiculed not only by her friends, but really by the narrative itself. Harry even takes ownership of a house elf at one point, sending him to complete tasks for him; his own personal slave.
Kreacher, Harry’s personal house elf.
JK Rowling also seems to delight in making fun of people with different body types, using “ugliness” and fatness as indicators of maliciousness and evil. And, of course, Harry Potter falls into the trap of racial stereotyping, with its tiny number of minority characters being deeply problematic.
It’s actually been good to see more and more folks taking a critical eye to the Harry Potter series in light of the issues surrounding JK Rowling. Some criticisms of the books at the time of their publication and in the years since had been written off or just ignored – and for folks who always felt uncomfortable with certain aspects of the stories or the ways in which they treated marginalised and minority groups, it must be cathartic to find more support.
Katie Leung as Cho Chang in The Goblet of Fire.
I won’t ask anyone to boycott or refuse to purchase Harry Potter merchandise or Hogwarts Legacy, because I don’t think it’s my place to do that. This piece wasn’t intended to change minds or convince people on the fence to adopt a certain point of view. It was more a way for me to get my thoughts in order and share why, as someone who talks a fair amount about the video games industry here on the website, I won’t be covering Hogwarts Legacy this year. Hogwarts Legacy could end up being a bust, at the end of the day – an overhyped, mediocre video game not worth all of this fuss and bother.
As I said at the beginning, we all have the right to decide for ourselves which products, companies, and public figures we want to support – and which ones we don’t or can’t support. For me, Hogwarts Legacy and the entire Harry Potter series now fall firmly into the latter category, and unless there’s a massively compelling reason to discuss the franchise in future, I hope that this will be the last time I have to comment on it.
A replica of the Hogwarts Express steam locomotive.
I would love to see greater acceptance of transgender and gender non-conforming people. I myself am non-binary, and it isn’t always easy in the UK in 2023 to be open about that. People like JK Rowling have caused and are continuing to cause harm to trans women in particular, and unfortunately her very public attacks on trans folks have been seized upon by people and organisations with pre-existing anti-trans views and agendas to halt and reverse trans rights.
Hogwarts Legacy and the Harry Potter series may not be openly transphobic in terms of narrative, but because a cut of the proceeds go to someone who is, and who uses the wealth, fame, and status she has to contribute to these causes, I’m now in a position where I can’t support them. As a consumer in a capitalist marketplace, all I can do is vote with my wallet – so that’s what I’m choosing to do.
I’m done with Harry Potter.
This is not an easy subject, and for people who are much greater fans of Harry Potter than I ever was, all I can really say is that I empathise with you. I keep thinking how I might feel if this kind of controversy were engulfing something I deeply care about, like Star Trek, and whether I could realistically cut off the entire Star Trek franchise as a point of principle. I genuinely don’t know what I’d do in that situation – so I sympathise with any Harry Potter fan who feels that way.
I also don’t think that many of the “hot takes” floating around on social media on this subject are doing anyone any favours. Viral videos proclaiming that anyone who purchases Hogwarts Legacy must be transphobic and is automatically a “bad person” don’t help the discourse around this complex and sensitive subject, and such polarising language arguably pushes away just as many people as it converts to this cause. So I feel that, while passions are understandably high, we need to try to approach these conversations, and our interlocutors on the other side of the debate, with as much calmness as possible.
So that’s it. I hope you now have a better understanding of why I can’t support Hogwarts Legacy and the Harry Potter series.
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Happy New Year! As 2023 gets underway, I think it’s fun to look back at the past year and see how the website performed. Thanks to my web host and Google Analytics, I have quite a lot of data to dive into for measuring such things.
My annual caveat applies: this whole thing is just for fun! Running this website is a hobby for me, not something I endeavour to take too seriously, and even if no one was tuning in I’d still be writing because it’s something that I enjoy doing. I’m not intending to turn this website into a full-time job, nor am I interested in chasing “internet points” or going viral. So everything we’re about to discuss should be considered with that in mind!
A lovely stock photo of a man reading on a tablet.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s reflect on the progress Trekking with Dennis made in 2022. This past year has been much less consistent on my side, with long breaks in between posts and a general slowdown in my writing. I wrote far fewer pieces for the website this year than I did in both 2020 and 2021, and the second half of the year in particular was much more sparse in terms of new articles, lists, and other posts.
That isn’t something I plan on addressing, at least not intentionally. As I said back in November when I last talked about this: the point of Trekking with Dennis for me is to talk about the subjects I fancy or that pique my interest at my own pace. In 2020 and 2021 I obviously found more things to talk about than I have this past year… and I’m actually okay with that. That doesn’t mean I don’t have regrets – there are films, television shows, and at least a dozen Star Trek episodes that I wish I’d found or made time to review in 2022. But I’d rather pace myself, take breaks when I need to, and continue enjoying what I do here instead of forcing myself to write to arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines and end up feeling burned out – or worse, no longer enjoying the creative process.
In short: if I find more time and energy to write in 2023 than I did in 2022, that’s great! But if not, that’s okay too.
I may or may not write more this year!
The website saw some significant milestones in 2022. The final post of the year – my annual “End-of-Year Awards” piece – was the 650th article that I’ve published here since I began the project in November 2019. That’s quite a lot of writing! The total number of visitors that the website received in 2022 was just over 67,000 – which is an absolutely incredible number! That makes 2022 the best year on record for Trekking with Dennis, beating 2021’s visitor numbers by a little over 6,000. That may not sound like much (especially considering the massive year-on-year improvement from 2020 to 2021) but it’s an increase of almost 10%, which is pretty darn good. I’m running at almost the same level as inflation!
Another big landmark came on April Fool’s Day, when the number of total hits ticked past the 100,000 mark for the first time. That means that, since November 2019 when Trekking with Dennis first went live, more than 100,000 people had visited the website. I marked the occasion with a banner at the top of the website for a few days!
Readers once again came from all over the globe – from Tanzania to Finland and from Japan to Peru!
Hello, Tanzania!
All that being said, I feel that 2022 was rather “front-loaded” in terms of visitors! Thanks to a couple of big posts about Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth season (which we’ll look at in more detail in a moment) the website did impressive numbers in January, February, March, and into April as well, before things started to tail off in the spring. Don’t get me wrong, even the quietest month of 2022 was still nice and busy, but we definitely saw the majority of visitors in those first few months.
In total, I wrote 471,500 words in 2022. That’s as many words as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and James Joyce’s Ulysses combined! It is, however, significantly less than my word counts for 2020 and 2021, but again that’s because I wrote fewer pieces for the website this past year. It’s still a lot of words, though!
So let’s count down the top ten most-read articles that I wrote in 2022!
My piece about the truly awful Diablo Immortal takes the number ten spot, partly thanks to being published within a couple of weeks of the mobile game’s release. I detest not only Diablo Immortal itself, but what it represents: the worst excesses of an incredibly greedy video games industry. And I held no punches in my tear-down of the appalling little game, calling out publisher Activision Blizzard for one of the worst, scummiest mobile games of the year.
Significant line:“I was surprised when I began seeing ads for the game all over my social media pages, and even more surprised to learn that Activision Blizzard has only just finished pushing this absolute turd of a game out of its corporate anus.”
I had a ton of fun writing up this tongue-in-cheek clash between Star Trek’s first two captains – a debate that has persisted in the Trekkie community since The Next Generation premiered all the way back in 1987! I also had fun mocking up a poster for the article’s key image, basing it on the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match poster that I think a lot of folks would be familiar with. I end up sitting firmly on the fence at the end of the article after considering the cases for both Kirk and Picard – because I like them both too much to say that one is definitively “better!”
Significant line:“Most Star Trek captains who have followed embody elements of both Kirk and Picard’s styles of management and leadership while remaining distinct characters, but when it comes to the franchise’s first two captains, there seems to be a major clash of personalities.”
In 2022 I kicked off my “video game spotlight” series, in which I plan to take a look back at some of my favourite games of all time. The first title to get the full write-up treatment was Banished, an indie town-building game that makes regular appearances on other lists here on the website. Since I’m far too late to reasonably call a piece like this a “review,” I settled on “spotlight” as a name, and I had a lot of fun talking about why Banished is such good fun. Hopefully I’ll add to this series in the new year; there are at least a dozen games I plan to shine a spotlight on in future!
Significant line:“The fact that I’m still playing [Banished] almost eight years later should tell you how I feel about it!”
I wrote this piece at the end of February, just days after the war in Ukraine kicked off. I wanted to highlight a few Star Trek episodes from different parts of the franchise that, at least in my opinion, make for great escapism. The episodes I chose are almost all lighter in tone, with themes of humour, family, and coming together front-and-centre. If I were doing the list all over again there are certainly more episodes I could include, but overall I’m happy with my picks. And if the list helped even one single person find something to watch when they were feeling low, then it’s been a rousing success.
Significant line:“A future where humanity has succeeded at conquering not only the problems of today but also many of the baser, more primitive aspects of our own nature holds an appeal that can be difficult to put into words…”
As the title suggests, this list – which was also my most-read piece about gaming in 2022 – shows off ten games that I consider to be decent alternatives to Hogwarts Legacy for anyone who doesn’t want to play or support the game. I wanted to contribute something to the discussion around Hogwarts Legacy that was a little more positive and that didn’t just consist of saying “J.K. Rowling is a horrible bigot who hates the Harry Potter fan community.” She is, and she does… but that isn’t what this piece was primarily about. As above, if it helped even one person find something to play, I consider it a success.
Significant line: “Hogwarts Legacy, just like the rest of the fictional setting that J.K. Rowling created, is not irreplaceable.”
It’s hard to say what this piece is about without spoiling Season 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Suffice to say that I came up with several theories about Una Chin-Riley – a.k.a. “Number One” – and where her story may go when Season 2 rolls around. I had fun putting the list together, as well as stepping back to consider her role in The Cage, where she might be during the events of The Original Series, a connection to Star Trek: Enterprise… and much more besides.
Significant line:“I’m looking forward to welcoming back Captain Pike, Una, and the rest of the crew – and getting a satisfying end to this storyline, too!”
This theory – that I only wrote in November – has been racking up a lot of views! Without spoiling anything, a new character named Captain Vadic is being billed as a villain in Star Trek: Picard’s upcoming third season, and I took the opportunity of her appearance in a trailer shown off at Comic-Con to consider a few possibilities for her origin and what her mission might be. If my current track record with theories is anything to go by I’m going to be wide of the mark by miles… but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a ton of fun to speculate!
Significant line:“As much as I like the idea of Vadic having a major connection to an event in The Next Generation or one of the films, if you forced me to place a bet right now, in November 2022, I’d have to put my money on her being someone brand-new…”
This theory did huge numbers in the first quarter of the year – while Discovery’s fourth season was running. I was ultimately disappointed by the way this storyline ended, but it was still fun to delve pretty deeply into the history of Star Trek to consider some potentially interesting character possibilities. It isn’t possible to say too much more without getting into spoiler territory! I had fun making up a rather jokey key image for this piece, too!
Significant line:“With Discovery taking an unplanned six-week break, we’ve got a little time to settle in and collect our thoughts.”
Shortly before Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premiered, I put together this list of episodes that I felt might have a connection of some kind to the upcoming story. I focused on what we knew about the season from pre-release trailers and marketing material, and selected stories that focused on time travel, the Q Continuum, Guinan, and the Borg Queen. I like to think that basically all of the episodes that I put on the list did something to inform the story of the season, even if I’d probably make a few changes in hindsight!
Significant line:“I think we’ve hit most of the key subjects – at least, those that we’re aware of at this early stage – and got a good mix of stories…”
So we come to the most-read article that I wrote in all of 2022! Blowing all of the others out of the water by several thousand hits, this theory about Q that I wrote in the aftermath of Picard Season 2 is clearly of interest to Trekkies! Partly, I must say, that’s because of how poorly-explained parts of the story of Season 2 ultimately were (the season isn’t one of my favourites, if you didn’t know). But regardless, I found it interesting to take what feels like an incomplete, muddled story as the starting point for another of my Star Trek theories, and even if we’ll never know what really happened, I hope that my guesswork at least makes sense and feels consistent with what we know of Q and the Q Continuum. I can’t say more without seriously spoiling the story of Picard Season 2.
Significant line:“As Trekkies and as fans who’ve followed Q’s journey over the span of more than three decades, it definitely feels like there’s a missing piece of the puzzle.”
So those were the most-read pieces of 2022!
But wait, there’s more! There are posts on the website going all the way back to November 2019, and some of them had a pretty big year too! Before we wrap things up, let’s look at the top five most-read posts from previous years.
Although it seemed not to light up the board when I first published it in August 2020, this piece about the 1987 pop hit Star Trekkin’ has since become one of the most consistent performers here on the website! It was one of the most-read pieces in both 2021 and 2022, and I look forward to seeing if it will make the cut again this year! In the piece I talk about the history of the song and its composition, as well as my own thoughts and personal connection with it. The song is a fun one, and well worth a listen for any Star Trek fan.
Significant line:“The song was – perhaps understandably – rejected by several record labels…”
Another piece that didn’t seem to get a lot of attention at first, my theory about Discovery Season 2 gained a lot of traction in 2022. It’s hard to get into specifics without spoiling things, but suffice to say that one of the main storylines in Discovery’s second season felt like it was setting up an origin story for the Borg – one of the Star Trek franchise’s biggest and most iconic villainous factions. In this piece I consider why it felt that way and whether it’s possible such a story was attempted and then abandoned, leaving behind clues in its wake.
Significant line:“I know for a fact that I’m not alone in having speculated that Discovery Season 2 was setting up an origin story for the Borg…”
This piece kicked off 2022 with a bang – and saw the year end on a high note, too. In 2020, with practically every major New Year event both in person and on television being cancelled, I put together a short list of things to watch instead, as well as time-stamps for getting a specific scene or line on screen at the stroke of midnight. The post did exceptionally well at New Year in both 2020 and 2021, and the same thing happened again in 2022, even with many in-person and televised events returning. This is one of those pieces that gets practically no views all year long, but then sees one massive spike over a relatively short period of time!
Significant line:“I’ve never been particularly impressed by fireworks. A professional display can be fun to see if you’re there in person, but on television much of the impact is lost.”
I’m not surprised to see the most-read article of 2021 continuing to do well. But I stand by what I said last time: I think a lot of folks are clicking on this piece looking for a “how-to” guide or walkthrough to achieve a specific ending to Mass Effect 3 – and that’s not what it’s about! The article takes a look at the different endings of the Mass Effect trilogy from a narrative point of view, and I tried to consider which would be the “best” – subjectively speaking, of course.
Significant line:“Like it or hate it (and my god do some people hate it) Mass Effect: Legendary Edition retains the three-and-a-half possible endings present in the Mass Effect 3 Extended Edition DLC from 2012.”
Earlier I talked about how 2022 was kind of “front-loaded” in terms of hits… well, here’s one of the main culprits! My theories about Unknown Species 10-C – a faction from Discovery’s fourth season that was shrouded in mystery – did absolutely huge numbers while the season was running, as many Trekkies were clearly just as interested as I was to learn more! I put together a whopping list of some twenty-six possibilities from past iterations of Star Trek, and if nothing else it was a lot of fun to speculate about how any of them could potentially connect with the story of the season.
Significant line:“Right now, this is one of the biggest mysteries in Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth season – and one of the most tantalising storylines that the series has ever teased us with.”
So that’s it!
Those were the most-read articles and columns of 2022 – and with that, I think that about wraps up our look back at the year. I tend not to go back and re-read things that I’ve written very often, but once a year it can be fun to take a step back. Taking a look at the pieces folks are most interested in doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to try to write more of that type, but it’s certainly interesting to see what people are most likely to click on!
Click!
As I said, 2022 was a year of ups and downs. The website broke records and passed milestones, but at the same time I definitely felt the need to take a break and to write less frequently. That doesn’t mean I’m not still having fun – but in order to preserve the enjoyment and not feel like I’m under pressure or in danger of getting burned out, I need to recognise my own limitations and take a step back when necessary. Perhaps that’s the lesson of 2022 – at least for what I do here on the website!
Stay tuned, because in the days ahead I’ll be looking forward to some of the entertainment experiences that lie before us in 2023 – some of which, all being well, will get the full review or write-up treatment here on the website when they’re ready! And if you missed it, you can take a look at my annual End-of-Year Awards, in which I dished out a few make-believe trophies and medals to some of my favourite films, games, and television shows of 2022.
I hope this was a bit of fun, or at least a mildly interesting look back!
– Dennis, Tuesday 3rd January 2023
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, owner, corporation, distributor, broadcaster, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
It’s the 30th of November, and that means it’s Trekking with Dennis’s third anniversary! I published my first article at the end of November 2019, kick-starting the project that would eventually become this website, and I think it’s worth taking a moment to both mark the occasion and look back at the past twelve months. No, this isn’t my “end of year” article looking at some of my favourite films, games, and television shows (that’ll come around New Year), but rather this is a more personal reflection on the events of the past twelve months.
Back in April, Trekking with Dennis passed 100,000 hits, which is a pretty huge milestone! And – touch wood – we’re on track to make 2022 the most successful year so far in terms of visitors, which is also fantastic news. Although visitor numbers and traffic aren’t my main focus, and I’d still be writing about these subjects even if no one was tuning in, it’s still a rewarding feeling to know that so many people have been interested in my take on some of these topics.
Check back in January for a more detailed look at stats and numbers!
But the past twelve months have also been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. This time last year I was posting at least one article every other day, and that carried on until the spring. But as we headed into the summer I found it difficult to keep up that schedule – I began to lose motivation and suffer from a case of writer’s block. By the time the September rolled around I was only managing a few posts a month, and I ended up taking an eight-week break from late September through to early November.
That break is the longest I’ve taken since starting the website, and truth be told I probably needed it. I’d begun to feel that I was writing some articles (and especially some Star Trek episode reviews) less for enjoyment and more out of a sense of obligation, and I think that comes across in at least some of the pieces I published this past summer and autumn. I’m not sure that those articles and reviews represent my best work, and they’re nowhere near the bar that I aim to reach.
Some of the reviews I wrote this year aren’t as good as I’d want them to be.
So if that’s what happened, what should the takeaway be? What lesson should I be learning from that period of burnout and of writing to deadlines out of a sense of obligation? I guess “don’t do that” is a pretty basic one! Perhaps I’d become a little too interested in sticking to my “every other day” writing schedule, and perhaps I’d lost focus on what this website was supposed to be achieving for me.
When I created Trekking with Dennis, what I wanted was a space on the internet where I could discuss the topics that I was interested in at my own pace. I could choose what I wanted to comment on, which films or television programmes I wanted to review, and talk about them in an open-ended way without word limits. Earlier this year, perhaps fuelled in part by a couple of posts that picked up a lot of attention, I started to forget that, and trying to chase the next big “viral” article became a distraction.
I need to remember why I like writing here!
Speaking of distractions, regular readers may recall that I recently jumped out of the toxic mess that is Twitter. I have an article that goes into more detail about why I thought it was the right time to bring an end to my two-year experiment with the platform, and I’d encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already. But suffice to say that I don’t feel Twitter was a good fit for me, I wasn’t really getting out of it what I’d hoped in terms of traffic to the website, and the general atmosphere on Twitter is one of division, toxicity, and embarrassingly childish behaviour. Dumping the platform has been good for my mental health – even though I occasionally find myself composing a pithy Twitter post in my head and now have nowhere to put it!
Earlier this year I stepped outside of my comfort zone and built myself a PC for the first time ever! As I said at the time, it’s increasingly rare to find wholly new experiences these days, so it was definitely an interesting project. The PC that I built back in March is working great, and it’s my hope that it will continue to serve as my main device for years to come! Constructing it wasn’t a completely smooth experience, but if nothing else that just gave me even more of a sense of accomplishment; tracking down a particularly troublesome issue and figuring out a solution was the icing on the cake of an interesting and fun experience… even if it didn’t necessarily feel that way at the time!
Building my own PC for the first time was a new and interesting project.
In housekeeping news, the website’s old URL is finally going offline. By the end of the year, only the current URL (trekkingwithdennis.com) will be functional, so if any of you still haven’t updated your bookmarks, now is the time! One unexpected consequence of last year’s decision to change the website’s name is that many links within posts and articles didn’t update – and I couldn’t figure out a way to change that! As a result, I’ve had to go back into basically 90% of all the pieces I’ve ever published here – more than 600 of them – and manually edit or remove URLs that are about to become outdated. What a hassle!
Naturally, doing that took a long time! But it was actually interesting to step back and re-read some of the articles and columns from the earliest days of the website. I don’t regularly re-read things that I wrote two or three years ago, so it was fun in a way to take a nostalgic trip back in time! Doing so also gave me the opportunity to fix a few issues with some of those older posts. Some of the earliest pieces that I wrote here didn’t have images, or if they did the images were low-quality, misaligned, or cropped poorly. I took the opportunity to update some of them while fixing the URL issue, and I have a short list of a few other pieces that need improved header images or other corrections.
Manually changing hundreds of links was an annoyance in some ways, but provided an interesting look back in others.
As we take a moment to look back to that day in 2019 and reflect on how far the website has come, it’s genuinely interesting to me to catch a glimpse of that pre-covid world. The pandemic has turned so many things upside down, and looking back to 2019, it feels like there was a brief window of optimism that came in between a decade that had been dominated by austerity and Brexit and the pandemic that was about to bowl us over. That moment coincided with the creation of Trekking with Dennis; it now occupies a strange space as we look ahead to a “winter of discontent” that could see blackouts, food shortages, and even a general strike!
This past year has seen a lot of Star Trek! In fact, there hasn’t been much of a break from Star Trek at all, although my enjoyment of it has been hampered by Paramount’s poor scheduling – putting two episodes on the same day for several weeks running makes no sense. And that’s before we get to the awful decisions Paramount has made that have denied new Star Trek shows to millions of fans around the world.
A lot of Star Trek episodes have been broadcast over the past twelve months.
Star Trek being cut off from much of its international fanbase has damaged the brand immeasurably, and as Paramount Plus continues its painfully constipated rollout, that damage isn’t going away. Looking at the big picture and considering how these decisions have impacted the brand and the fan community are things we’ll have to consider in a future article I think, but on a purely personal level, I felt deeply disappointed in Paramount this year. The Discovery Season 4 catastrophe last November rumbled on for a while, and then came the lack of a broadcast for Strange New Worlds.
Paramount Plus finally arrived here in the UK earlier this year, but having already seen most of Strange New Worlds – and with the series running weeks behind on the UK edition of Paramount Plus – I didn’t bother to sign up. It’s something I will consider in the new year, depending on how things go, but it’s by no means a given. Money is tight and getting tighter – I had to cancel my plans to pre-order Starlink (Elon Musk’s satellite internet service) because it was unaffordable given inflation and other price hikes, and that’s just one example. I don’t have a lot of other expenses that I can see myself cutting back on, so Paramount Plus may not win a new subscriber any time soon.
Paramount Plus is now available in the UK.
The sad thing with the Paramount and Star Trek situation is just how good much of Star Trek has been this year. There were issues with Picard Season 2 and some of the sub-plots in Discovery’s fourth season, but by and large it’s been a good year for the franchise. Strange New Worldswas thoroughly excellent – who knew that making an episodic, exploration-oriented Star Trek series might be a good idea?
Star Trek has continued to be the main topic here on the website over the past twelve months, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the pieces that I’ve published. But there have been some other interesting films and television shows that I’ve checked out, some of which I encountered in the process of doing research for the website. As I said last year, Trekking with Dennis continues to broaden my experiences of media! Television shows like 1899 and Five Days At Memorial, films like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and Morbius, and games like Stray and Sniper Elite 5 all came onto my radar as a result of seeking out new and different things. While I haven’t found time to write a full review of all of them, I have included some on lists and as parts of other projects. In a general sense, I find myself thinking more about what kind of films, games, and television shows I want to check out, and sometimes trying out something quite different, all because I have Trekking with Dennis and I’m on the lookout for things to write about and discuss.
There have been some… interesting films this year!
I’ve added a few items to my Greatest Hits page, but fewer pieces made the cut over the past twelve months than in previous years. Partly that’s because of the burnout I talked about earlier; writing fewer pieces, and some of them being of noticeably lower quality, has meant that there haven’t been as many that I would consider to be among my best work.
So I suppose that’s it for now. The website’s third year in operation has been one of ups and downs in some respects. I didn’t plan on taking any time out, let alone being gone for almost two months, but that’s the way it goes sometimes! As I’ve said before, this is a project for fun, not something that I view as a serious job, so I try to pace myself and not overdo it. There are definitely things that I haven’t written about that I feel I should have – reviews of the second half of Lower Decks’ third season being first and foremost in my mind at the moment. However, my current attitude is one of “I’ll get around to it when I feel like it,” and it’s in that spirit that the website will operate in the immediate term!
If you’re a regular reader, thank you for sticking around. Some of the pieces I’ve written over the past twelve months have really taken off and done some impressive numbers (by my standards, at least) and I’m grateful to everyone for tuning in, clicking on my posts, and checking out this old Trekkie’s takes on Star Trek, gaming, and the broader world of geeky entertainment. I have no immediate plans to go back on hiatus, nor to change in any major way what I do here. You can expect more Star Trek reviews and theories, re-watches of older episodes, analysis of the video games industry, and discussion of television shows, films, and games. If you’re new around here, I hope you’ll stick around – or at least check back from time to time to see what’s new!
Here’s to another year. Cheers!
– Dennis Wednesday, 30th November 2022
All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective broadcaster, studio, developer, distributor, company, etc. Some stock images may be courtesy of Pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
“Put up or shut up,” “put your money where your mouth is,” and other similar phrases and sayings all have the same meaning: stand by your principles. And that’s what I shall be doing when it comes to the football World Cup, which kicks off in the nation of Qatar in less than 24 hours’ time. I won’t be tuning in to watch a single minute of football at a World Cup for the first time in my life, having cheered on England at every tournament (that they qualified for, at any rate) for literally as long as I can remember. But I can’t support the decision to send the World Cup to Qatar.
In my view, England, Wales, and any other footballing nation with a conscience should have officially boycotted the tournament, and made their intentions plain in that regard months if not years ago. All of this talk of a “political boycott” – in which senior government officials refuse to attend but the football team still goes and plays – is utterly meaningless and hypocritical. Either go to the World Cup and say that “sport and politics should be wholly separate,” or stand by your principles. The FA and UK government want to have their cake and eat it; to criticise Qatar while simultaneously attending the World Cup. But it doesn’t work that way.
England’s World Cup squad with Prince William, who is the President of the English Football Association. Image Credit: Football Association
Qatar should never have been in serious contention to host a tournament like the World Cup in the first place, and despite an internal “investigation” in which FIFA cleared itself of any wrongdoing, let’s not pretend that the decision to award the World Cup to Qatar back in 2010 was anything other than corrupt. Qatar schemed, cheated, and bribed their way to hosting this tournament, and while they’re certainly not the only nation to have bought and paid for a major event (looking at you, Salt Lake City) the sheer brazenness of the bribery and corruption in this case was enough to turn off fans right from the start.
Qatar is simply not a place well-suited to play football. Setting aside the searing desert temperatures that, even at this time of year, can cause health problems, it’s a tiny place which in 2010 had a single football stadium that everyone agreed was unsuitable for hosting games at this level. Qatar pledged to build eight new stadia in time for the World Cup… and that’s where the problems began.
La’eeb, the official mascot for Qatar 2022.
At least 6,500 people have died building these eight stadia over the past twelve years. Let’s repeat that: six thousand, five hundred people died. Sixty-five hundred people. Have you known of any other comparable building project in the last few decades to have a death toll of more than a few individuals? For comparison, the London Olympic Games in 2012 required the construction of new stadia for the track and field events, swimming, cycling, and more – and recorded a single fatality (a crane operator in 2011 slipped and fell during a storm).
Many of the 6,500 people who died to build Qatar’s vanity project were “migrant workers” – many of whom came from the Indian subcontinent and Africa and were paid a pittance for their labour. Many deaths were attributed to heatstroke, but the poor working conditions contributed to many more. And according to recent reports from fans and journalists who have begun arriving in Qatar ahead of the event, major construction projects like the so-called “fan village” aren’t even complete.
Part of the unfinished “fan village” in Qatar. Image Credit: Daily Mail
The treatment of these migrant workers should come under heavy scrutiny, and should have resulted in Qatar being relieved of its opportunity to host the tournament years ago. Had a decision been taken in, say, 2017 or 2018, lives could have been saved. Even as late as this summer, it would have been possible to strip Qatar of the World Cup and make alternative arrangements in countries that already have the footballing and transportation infrastructure to handle an even of this magnitude. Those decisions should have been taken by FIFA, and there were years in which the Qatari treatment of its forced labourers was obvious even to casual outside observers. But again, corruption at FIFA runs deep, and money talks. Qatar was allowed to continue as host of the World Cup, and FIFA seems to have taken no action whatsoever to prevent further deaths, even as the death toll continued to climb.
As if that wasn’t enough, Qatar also has an appalling record on human rights, with homosexuality being illegal. This issue also came up in regards to Russia four years ago, so it seems that FIFA has a knack for awarding the World Cup to the most homophobic countries imaginable. This has led to some utterly ridiculous statements, including from some government officials here in the UK: “don’t be gay” if you go to Qatar is basically the official advice from the British government.
“Don’t be gay” in Qatar is the best advice the UK government can offer.
And it’s this issue of gay rights where the England football team and others feel incredibly hypocritical. If they want to take a stand in favour of gay rights in Qatar, the only way to do so in any meaningful way is not to play. All this talk of rainbow shoelaces, rainbow armbands, or rainbow shirt logos is just nonsense – as long as the teams are there, they’re providing the Qatari government and its homophobic policies with their tacit support. Qatar is using the World Cup as a textbook exercise in sportswashing – and to make a packet of cash, of course – and we’re not only letting them get away with it, but actively participating in it.
I cannot in good conscience support the World Cup in Qatar. I wish that the British government, the English and Welsh football associations, and others from around the world had been bold enough to take a stand, but they haven’t. So it falls to all of us as fans to decide – is sport more important than human rights? Can we support and endorse a tournament in a place like Qatar? Or should we do what our governments and football associations have been too cowardly to do, and boycott the tournament ourselves? I’m choosing the latter.
One of the stadia that cost so many lives to build.
By refusing to watch any of the matches, engage with any of the posts on social media, or buy products from brands and sponsors who are heavily investing in advertising at the World Cup, we can send a message that we don’t support Qatar, that we don’t support sportswashing, that we don’t support a regime that condemns workers to death and routinely violates the basic human rights of its citizens and residents, and that we don’t support hypocrisy.
It isn’t good enough to say that we oppose Qatar’s position on gay rights, or that we believe that migrant workers have been mistreated, if we then go on to cheer for our favourite teams, make the sponsors feel that their decision to invest in Qatar was worthwhile, and provide cover for the Qatari regime as they attempt to sportswash their image and their reputation. It’s time to take a stand on principle, and do so as loudly as possible.
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the current Emir of Qatar.
Qatar should never have been awarded the World Cup, and when the bribery and underhanded schemes that they used came to light, they should have been stripped of the tournament. When the bodies of migrant workers piled up as Qatar built its stadia, again the right to host the tournament should have been taken away. And when it became obvious that Qatar’s appalling attitude to basic human rights wasn’t going to change, that should have been the final nail in the coffin. At every stage, FIFA failed to act. But it isn’t only FIFA’s fault. The British government, the football associations of England and Wales, and governments and sporting bodies from Europe, the United States, and around the world could and should have worked together to take stand. They failed to do so.
That only leaves us. The World Cup is a nakedly commercial event, one which sponsors and advertisers hope will bring their corporations a bucketload of cash. The more of us who loudly and proudly state that we aren’t participating, and the more we call out corporations like Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Hyundai, and Visa (to name but a few) the more they will realise that they have made a mistake – and the greater the chance we have of avoiding a repeat of this disaster in the future.
Hit the corporations and the Qataris where it hurts: in the wallet. I hope you’ll join me in boycotting this year’s World Cup.
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
They say that social media isn’t an airport: you don’t need to announce your departure. But having recently jumped out of the “hellsite” that is Twitter, I wanted to explain why I decided to put an end to an almost two-year experiment with the micro-blogging platform – and my reasons for leaving may not be what you expect.
In 2022, tech entrepreneur (and richest human on Earth) Elon Musk announced that he planned to purchase Twitter. Some of the changes he made when the deal eventually went through haven’t gone down all too well – but my decision to quit is entirely unrelated to the Musk situation, even though I now find myself as one voice among many who have chosen to leave Twitter at the same time. In fact, the situation with Elon Musk’s takeover is partly why I wanted to share my thoughts; it would be easy for folks to assume that I left Twitter because of Musk, when really the timing is little more than coincidence.
New Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
First of all, I don’t think I was ever a good fit for Twitter, nor was Twitter the right place for me, because of my writing style. If you’re a regular reader, you may know that I have a somewhat longwinded or exhaustive style (I have reviews of individual Star Trek episodes that break the 10,000-word mark, for instance) and that just doesn’t gel with Twitter’s 280-character limit. I find it nigh-on impossible to condense an article or argument into such a short-form post, and while Twitter does allow for writing threads of posts that are joined together, that sort of defeats the purpose – and I found that many people on Twitter would only read one post out of an entire thread anyway.
As a result of posts being so curtailed, the conversation on Twitter, such as it is, lacks nuance. When we’re talking about the world of entertainment, which is my primary focus here on the website, I found that a Twitter post had barely enough space for me to say that I either liked something or I didn’t; there’s very little room for shades of grey or a more detailed explanation of how some elements of a production worked while others didn’t. And the audience on Twitter seems to largely expect that kind of black-and-white judgement.
No, not that kind of Shades of Gray…
In practically all of my reviews here on the website, you’ll find me saying both positive and negative things about a film, television show, or video game – because in almost every case, no production is either absolutely perfect nor irredeemably awful. Even in cases where I’ve been scathing about films I didn’t enjoy – such as The Rise of Skywalker or Zack Snyder’s Justice League – I found positive things to say about some aspects of the projects, and likewise in productions that I loved and had plenty of positive things to say – like Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth season finale, Coming Home, or the video game Forza Horizon 5 – I wasn’t shy about picking on elements that I felt were less successful. Twitter, at least in my experience, didn’t really allow me to do that – and most people I interacted with there didn’t seem to want that nuanced discussion in any case.
Most things in life are not black-and-white, with either wholly positive or entirely negative opinions, and speaking for myself, it can be those nuances that I find the most interesting. Twitter, by its very nature, forces users into one camp or another, and when there’s already so much division in the world – and in fan communities – that kind of discussion goes nowhere positive. Taking Star Trek as an example, I feel that there have been some incredible Star Trek episodes since the franchise returned to the small screen five years ago… but there have also been some pretty serious missteps by Paramount Global, as well as some disappointing storytelling decisions to boot. But on Twitter, fans are pretty firmly divided into two camps: those who support new Star Trek and those who hate it. I found it difficult to fit in with either; I was to pro-“new Trek” for those who hate it, and too critical of it for those who never wanted to see a negative opinion expressed and who were quick to label anyone saying anything remotely critical of Paramount as a “hater.”
I’ve been critical of Paramount Global over the past couple of years.
On both sides of an increasingly black-or-white argument, I saw people who openly said that they didn’t want fans from “the other side” to even follow them, let alone interact with them, and these divisions seem to go very deep. One fan had in their Twitter bio words to the effect of “I never want to say anything negative about Star Trek ever” – and I just feel that such extremes of positivity or negativity don’t make for a healthy fan community, nor for a supportive one that can discuss in a civil and polite way the franchises they love. And this was by no means exclusive to the Star Trek fan community – similar divisions and arguments seem to plague practically every community on Twitter, and that’s before we even get to the world of politics!
On a similar note, Twitter reminded me a lot of the kind of stupid “he said, she said” arguments that were common on the playground at school. In the roughly two years I spent on Twitter I lost count of the number of times that “drama” erupted in the Star Trek fan community, with everything from financial scams to racist rants to ill-considered compliments triggering huge waves of backlash targeting certain individuals and their friends. Many times I was told that a person I had followed was “toxic,” and that if I wanted to remain part of whatever clique I had inadvertently stumbled upon then I’d better un-follow a whole host of people extra-quick.
It’s a visual metaphor.
If someone made a mistake – not being racist or anything truly nasty, but just saying something ill-advised or even something that was taken the wrong way – they would often find themselves the subject of hate and abuse, leading to exile. Twitter’s community of medieval peasants placed the targets of the day’s ire in the stocks, tarring and feathering them until the humiliation or attacks got too much, forcing them to leave the platform. I saw perfectly decent people who had friends and fans make a single mistake, write one single poorly-worded post, and get run off the site by sanctimonious self-appointed moderators.
I’d heard people call Twitter “toxic” long before I joined, and I’d even seen some folks refer to it as a “hellsite,” but I confess that I was entirely unprepared for the levels of childishness, of toxicity, and of poor behaviour that I encountered. Fortunately, for the duration of my two years on Twitter, none of that hate was ever directed at me personally, but simply being there and seeing these “Twitter dramas” unfold was enough to put me off.
An average Twitter user getting ready for a day of arguing with strangers about meaningless nonsense.
I joined Twitter with the rather shameless intention of promoting some of the articles here on the website, in the hopes that I’d get a few more clicks from Trekkies and people interested in some of the other things I talk about here. But looking at my stats, the posts I shared on Twitter only ever got a few hundred clicks at the very most, meaning that the experiment was a failure and sticking around didn’t feel worthwhile. I was conscious not to come across like a spam-bot, only ever posting links to the website, so I tried to expand what I did to include memes and jokes, often but not always about Star Trek. But even so, I never managed to attract much of a following.
This isn’t intended to sound bitter, and I appreciated that some folks on Twitter did follow my account and share and like some of the posts I made. I’m grateful for that and for their support. But speaking purely practically, being on Twitter didn’t accomplish what I hoped it would, and the few hundred extra hits that the website got wasn’t worth falling down that rabbit hole and getting sucked in to the politics and the drama that swirls around that infernal website.
Social media just isn’t my strong suit!
Twitter became a time-sink for me, and I found myself scrolling through memes, politics, and even some of those damned arguments and toxic conversations that I talked about earlier. I found I could spend hours just endlessly doomscrolling, and honestly it wasn’t good for my mental health – nor for my productivity. While there were some genuinely interesting accounts sharing fun posts, they were drowned out in an ocean of negativity, toxicity, and argument – and perhaps that’s partly why my own account got lost and never managed to find much of an audience, even in the niches I hoped to break into.
The political side of this was, for me, perhaps the worst part – I found myself unable to resist the temptation to fall down these political rabbit holes, and would waste time in a way that wasn’t positive for my mental health. Politics can be fascinating, don’t get me wrong, and Twitter is, in some respects anyway, an interesting platform in which politicians at all levels can interact directly with their constituents. But for many of the same reasons that we’ve just been discussing, those conversations are black-and-white, and Twitter is firmly divided into camps. Toxicity and hate reign supreme, with the most extreme posts getting the most attention and the most feedback. It really is a nightmare.
I found myself spending way too much time reading and thinking about politics.
I’m glad that a platform like Twitter exists, where people from different backgrounds and with different opinions can interact. I think there were good intentions there – at least in the beginning. And despite his personal controversies, I hope that Elon Musk can find a way to make the platform a success going forward; the world needs a place to communicate, and for all the talk of toxicity and people falling into echo chambers, the one positive thing to say about Twitter – and social media in general – is that it can, under the right circumstances, expose people to points of view that they may not have considered, and with proper content moderation it should be able to direct people away from conspiracy theories in the direction of scientific fact. Twitter has failed on that latter point lately – but no more so than any other big social media platform.
But for me, Twitter was never a good fit. I need to have the freedom to write longer posts, to take positions on the subjects I discuss that don’t fall solidly into “love it” or “hate it,” and just in general my communication skills, even online, are lacking. I didn’t know how to use the site to talk to people or make friends, nor how to really take advantage of its algorithms to drive traffic to my own website.
So that’s it. If you used to follow me on Twitter and wondered what happened to my account, now you know. I have no plans to join any other social media platforms at this time, and while I’m happy to have experimented with Twitter and given it as much of a fair shake as I reasonably could, it was definitely time for me to get out.
No statement in the article above should be interpreted as targeting any individual, fan group, social media page, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
There’s a phrase that seems to be appearing more and more often these days – at least in the increasingly left-wing social media circles in which I find myself after hours of doomscrolling. The “cost of living crisis” that we’re all feeling biting us in the backside is being reframed as a “cost of greed crisis,” as massive corporations continue to profiteer off the misery of ordinary people. It’s incredibly galling to see a company pleading poverty in public statements, then turning around to its shareholders and boasting of record-setting profits, but it’s something that we see more and more often these days. Corporations will claim they’re “suffering” through this crisis just like the rest of us – but they still seem to find the money to pay massive shareholder dividends and furnish their executives with eye-watering bonuses.
It’s through this lens that I view Sony’s PlayStation price hike. If you’ve missed the news, Sony is jacking up the price of PlayStation 5 consoles around the world from a recommended retail price of £449 to £470 here in the UK, and from €499 to €549 in the European Union. Similar price hikes are taking place in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and Latin America – although the USA seems to have escaped, at least for now.
PlayStation 5 consoles are about to get a lot more expensive.
This is unprecedented for a games console. As time goes by, consoles have always seen price reductions, not price increases, and as each generation of home consoles wears on there’s an expectation that manufacturers will lower the price, enabling more and more people to pick up the latest machines. Sony is bucking this trend in the worst way possible and at the worst time possible, throwing into chaos plans many folks will have had to pick up a PlayStation 5 in the run-up to the holidays.
At a time when many of us are suffering as a result of inflation, excessive bills, and other financial pressures, it’s incumbent upon corporations like Sony to try to minimise the damage. Sony doesn’t need to jack up the price of PlayStation 5 consoles now; doing so is pure greed and a desire to make already-excessive profits look positively gluttonous. It’s a reminder, if one were needed, that no corporation is ever a friend. Corporations’ loyalties lie with those who are already wealthy: the 1% who own massive stock portfolios and for whom there will never be a choice between going cold or going hungry. Sony has nailed its colours to the mast with this decision – but it’s hardly the only corporation to be using the current cost of living and inflation crises as a paper-thin excuse for profiteering.
Sony is jacking up the price of PlayStation 5s all over the world.
Sony has already demonstrated how anti-consumer it can be with the piss-poor launch of the PlayStation 5, one of the worst console launches ever. By failing to produce enough machines, Sony played right into the hands of touts and scalpers, ensuring that many players – and many children – were left disappointed and unable to acquire a console. Those who did either had to be exceptionally lucky to find a shop that had a console in stock or pay ridiculously-inflated rates to a scalper. Sony took no action whatsoever to prevent this, and for months after the console launched it wasn’t uncommon to see units on auction sites and private social media sales where prices were more than double the RRP.
In addition, most new PlayStation 5 games have seen a huge increase in price since the beginning of this new console generation. Games that used to cost $60/£55 now regularly go for $70/£65 – and that’s often just for the “base” or “core” version. Complete games, including pre-order bonuses, special editions, and the like can easily be in excess of £100. So players are being hit and hit again by Sony – and by other greedy companies in the gaming realm.
Different special editions are available for upcoming PlayStation title The Last Of Us Part I.
At the end of July, shortly before this PlayStation price hike was announced, Sony made another announcement. The corporation told investors and shareholders that it was predicting profits for the 2022-23 financial year of $8.4 billion. Let’s repeat that: Sony expects to make $8.4 billion of pure profit over the next few months – and they have the sheer fucking audacity to turn around a couple of weeks later and tell players that it’s getting too expensive to make PlayStation 5 consoles so the price has to go up. Two words for you, Sony: fuck off.
Earlier in the year, Sony also announced record-setting profits in both its film and music divisions, with Sony Pictures making a profit of $394 million in just the first quarter of the year and the corporation’s music division surpassing that, posting a quarterly profit of $471 million. This reminds us of something important, too: Sony is a massive corporation whose reach extends far beyond gaming.
A summary of Sony’s increased profits in the first quarter of this year. Image Credit: Sony Group Corporation.
Even if we accept Sony’s claim at face-value – that manufacturing PlayStation 5 consoles and buying the required components has become more expensive – then Sony, as a massive corporation, can easily offset any increased costs with the record-breaking profits it’s been making in other fields. Music and cinema are just two examples shown above, but Sony also has many other profitable business divisions and subsidiaries, and by taking a tiny fraction of those record profits, Sony could have avoided passing the price increase on to the rest of us at a time when inflation and the cost of living catastrophe is really hurting a lot of people.
This is pure greed, there’s no two ways about it. Sony has demonstrated, in truly callous and uncaring fashion, just how little respect or care it has for practically everyone. And if you’re an American thinking that this isn’t coming your way: I wouldn’t bet on it. Sooner or later Sony – and perhaps other corporations in the gaming space, too – will increase your prices just like they have in the rest of the world.
Different PS5 editions.
We could talk at length about where inflation has come from, what’s causing all of these problems (and spoiler alert, it isn’t all Putin’s fault), and maybe one day we should. But for now, I think it’s enough to say that this price hike from Sony is about greed. Sony is a greedy, money-grubbing corporation that has chosen to screw over its own fans and players at a time when it’s already making more money than it’s ever made before. Sony will soon be paying out some of that money – your money – to shareholders in the form of dividends and to executives in the form of massive bonuses, all while the rest of us are barely keeping our heads above water with a huge storm heading our way this winter.
For some folks, a PlayStation 5 was something that, despite shortages, they were still hoping to pick up in the months ahead. For some parents, a PlayStation 5 seemed like a great Christmas gift. Sony is doing everything it can to hurt those people, forcing them to pay more unnecessarily at a time when people simply can’t afford it.
Profiteering is absolutely disgusting and Sony should be ashamed of itself.
PlayStation and PlayStation 5 are the copyright of Sony/Sony Interactive Entertainment. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence (except to corporate profiteers).
Here we go again. Paramount continues to double-down on the disdain its corporate leadership has for anyone who doesn’t happen to live in the United States. First came the news that the London edition of Destination Star Trek – one of the biggest conventions outside of the United States – was being cancelled with only a few weeks’ notice, and shortly after that we learned that when Paramount+ finally arrives here in the UK later this month, it won’t bring with it all of the episodes of Strange New Worlds that have been broadcast in the United States.
Let’s break these down and deal with them one at a time.
It’s been over a decade since I was last able to attend an in-person convention. Unfortunately my health pretty much rules out things like that these days! But London’s Destination Star Trek has been an event that a lot of folks have on their calendars. Hosted by a company called Massive Events, under license from Paramount, the convention is one of the few big official events to take place outside of the United States and (pandemic disruption aside) has been running for a number of years.
Destination Star Trek’s cancellation announcement.
Not only was the event cancelled on very short notice, but there was a mess for several days surrounding the issue of refunds. At first, Massive Events were unwilling to offer full refunds, instead only offering tickets to a hypothetical future event. Perhaps under advice from their legal team, that line has now changed. If anyone reading this has tickets for Destination Star Trek that they haven’t refunded yet, I believe you only have about ten days to contact the company to sort out your refund, so you better hop to it!
Take this with a grain of salt, but fan-site Trek Central has been reporting a “leak” from an insider at Massive Events that places the blame for the cancellation entirely at the feet of Paramount. According to Trek Central’s “whistleblower,” Paramount simply has no interest in promoting big conventions and events in Europe. Small events may continue to happen, they claim, for “promotional purposes,” but the days of officially licensed conventions in Europe may be over.
Attendees at a recent edition of Destination Star Trek London. Image Credit: StarTrek.com
I’ll link the full article from Trek Central below so you can see their piece in full, and as always I encourage critical thinking and ensuring you’ve done your homework and placed everything in its proper context! But suffice to say that if Trek Central’s “insider” is right, this just confirms our worst fears about the appalling nature of Paramount’s corporate attitude.
I’ve written about this several times here on the website, but Paramount Global as a whole is in a pretty bad place. Corporate leadership needs a complete clear-out, with old and outdated thinking in dire need of being replaced by new people who have a better understanding of the way entertainment works in this day and age. The damage done to Star Trek by continuing to treat non-American fans like second-class citizens can and has spilled over into Star Trek’s domestic market, and I don’t understand how Paramount doesn’t recognise that.
Paramount Global’s logo.
We live in a globalised, connected world, one in which the internet and social media in particular bind us all together. For all intents and purposes, the entire world is one big marketplace for Paramount’s products, and decisions to hurt potential fans and viewers in one part of that marketplace have a huge knock-on effect.
Let me try to break it down for the “America First” Trumpians on the Paramount board: imagine you’ve launched Paramount+ in three out of fifty states: California, Oregon, and Washington. All of your marketing and all of your events target those states and those states only, and you ignore and cut off potential viewers in New York, Wyoming, and everywhere else. You cancel events due to take place in North Carolina, and when Paramount+ finally lands in Nevada a year after its original launch, it doesn’t have the same content – new episodes of new shows are missing.
Donald Trump would be proud.
That’s the approach Paramount has taken to the rest of the world: to cut us adrift, not share their latest creations, and ignore all questions about it. The resultant harm that has been done to the Star Trek brand is impossible to gauge right now, but it’s significant. Projects like Lower Decks and Prodigy should have been gateways into the Star Trek franchise for untold numbers of new fans… but because of Paramount’s pathetic “America First” approach, we won’t know how much bigger or more successful those shows could have been.
If Paramount hopes to break into the top tier of streaming services and make Paramount+ into a genuine competitor to the likes of Netflix and Disney+, this ridiculous and outdated approach to the rest of the world needs to go. Why should I sign up for Paramount+ here in the UK if doing so won’t give me access to the same episodes and the same content as viewers in the United States? As I’ve said before, Paramount+ does not exist in a vacuum and fans can easily find alternative methods of accessing that content.
It’s some kind of visual metaphor…
There needs to be a root-and-branch overhaul at Paramount, and particularly in its streaming division, if there’s to be any hope of salvaging Paramount+ and the Star Trek franchise. Strange New Worlds has been an impressive series across its first five episodes – but if those episodes are cut off and only available via piracy, Paramount isn’t getting any attention or benefit from that. Casual viewers – who make up the vast majority of any television show’s audience – won’t even be aware of the existence of Strange New Worlds if Paramount+ isn’t available in their part of the world, but more significantly for Paramount, many potential American viewers won’t become aware of it either.
For every social media post that doesn’t reach many people, for every hashtag that doesn’t trend, Paramount’s influence is reduced. And because social media is global, fans across the world need to be able to talk about their shows and films together. When a huge portion of the audience can’t do that, it doesn’t just harm the reputation of Paramount in those areas, it harms it at home, too. That’s the lesson that the Paramount board has continually failed to learn.
Leaked photo from the Paramount boardroom.
These disgusting moves won’t stop people like me from being Trekkies. I’ve been a fan for more than thirty years, when I first watched The Next Generation during its original run here in the UK, and that isn’t going to change. But what Paramount’s approach guarantees is that there will be fewer and fewer new fans from the UK, Europe, and all across the world. Where Star Trek was once as powerful and as influential as Star Wars and other big brands, that reputation will continue to diminish. Fewer fans means less online chatter, and less online chatter makes it harder for any new Star Trek project – or any other project from Paramount – to gain traction, even within the United States.
Although I’m not about to quit the Star Trek fandom, these moves harm fans’ enjoyment of new shows. If we’re constantly made to feel like we aren’t important, it’s hard to get as excited or as engaged for a new show, and while I’ve been happy to watch Strange New Worlds and Prodigy over the past few months, I haven’t been talking about them online, reviewing them, or bigging them up on social media. Paramount has taken away at least some of my excitement and enjoyment – and I’m hardly alone in feeling that way.
By the time Strange New Worlds has landed in the UK, most Trekkies will have already seen it.
If this approach continues, with the United States being prioritised over everyone else, franchises like Star Trek won’t last long. Paramount+ is about to launch at perhaps the worst possible time into an incredibly difficult market, and there are no guarantees that it will be anywhere close to successful here in the UK. If Paramount wants to convince Star Trek fans that it’s worth the investment, they need to demonstrate that. They need to stop cancelling conventions and stop ignoring us on social media, but more importantly they need to make every episode of every show available to everyone.
Why should I pay for Paramount+ if I can’t watch the latest episodes of Star Trek? If the service I’m getting is clearly and demonstrably worse than the same service an American would get, how does Paramount possibly expect to sell it to me? Perhaps someone senior should ponder those questions.
So Paramount screws up and continues to disappoint its non-American fans. What else is new?
I’m trying to get my thoughts in order with June just around the corner. Here in the UK we’re just over three weeks away from the (alleged) launch date of Paramount+, and despite my criticisms of Paramount Global and the jokes I’ve made on social media, I truly want to be able to sign up for the platform and give my financial backing to the renewed Star Trek franchise. But I’m not sure that I can, at least not at the moment.
As a disabled person on a fixed income, the current inflation and cost of living crisis is hitting me particularly hard. Since the start of this year I’ve cancelled my plans for an upgrade to my slow internet connection and also let go of my Netflix subscription. I’d originally signed up for Netflix in order to be able to watch Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, and although there are still Netflix projects that interest me, the removal of the Star Trek franchise from the platform was a big factor in choosing to cancel that subscription.
I originally signed up for Netflix to be able to watch Star Trek: Discovery.
Right now I have two subscriptions that I pay for: Xbox Game Pass and Disney+. In order to be able to afford Paramount+, realistically I’d have to cancel one or the other. And the problem there is simple: I regularly use and enjoy both. Subscribing to Game Pass has meant that I’ve only had to buy one game since the start of the year (Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, in case you were wondering). It’s a good service – for now, at least – that offers a decent number of games, and although I don’t spend as much time gaming as I did say a decade ago, Game Pass still has a lot to offer.
Disney+ has a few new shows that I’m interested in, like the current Obi-Wan Kenobi series, but more than that it’s a service that carries a lot of shows that I’ve enjoyed in years past. The likes of Futurama or Scubs make great background viewing; light entertainment that I don’t need to think too deeply about. Kids’ cartoon Phineas and Ferb is one of my comfort shows that I turn to on days when my mental health is poor, and Disney+ even carries shows like Lost and a diverse array of documentaries and films.
I watch quite a lot of things on Disney+ these days.
I feel like the debate I’m currently having internally about streaming kind of encapsulates a broader issue with the oversaturated streaming market, but more significantly for Paramount Global and the Star Trek franchise, it shows how being too late to the party can be incredibly costly. I’m not trying to decide between Paramount+ and Disney+ in a vacuum with both services on an equal footing; I already have Disney+, so in order to be able to afford Paramount+, Paramount needs to convince me to give up what I already have.
Perhaps the cost of living crisis of 2022 has blown the lid off things – it certainly has for me, at least – but these kinds of conflicts were inevitable, and not every streaming service currently on the market can survive. Perhaps current events will accelerate the decline of some of the lesser ones – such as CNN+, which cost parent company Time Warner over $300 million and lasted barely one month – but with the market having become so crowded and so anti-consumer, there simply isn’t room for everyone.
There have been some high-profile streaming failures already.
I’ve argued this point before – in an article that you can find by clicking or tapping here – but I really think it makes a lot of sense for some of the lesser companies to get out of the streaming game and focus instead on making content, not trying to make their own platform. The Star Trek franchise could be a good example of how this could work; Discovery was sold to Netflix, but Picard and Lower Decks were sold to Amazon Prime Video. Other media companies could take a similar approach, selling their shows and films to the highest-bidding streaming platform without making a cast-iron commitment to always work exclusively with a single platform.
That has to be the future, doesn’t it? It isn’t affordable for most households to pay for four, five, or six different streaming subscriptions even at the best of times, so something’s got to give sooner or later. As inflation and the cost of living continue to bite around the world – and with no sign of things improving at least in the short-term – I’d expect similar conversations to be happening in a lot of households. It’s possible that we’ll even start to see the impact of this on the streaming market pretty soon.
It’s increasingly unaffordable for folks to keep adding new streaming subscriptions.
I’ve written about piracy here on the website on more than one occasion. Although it can be hard to explain how I feel in just a few words, I’ll give it a shot: when a series, film, or video game is made available, I’m firmly in the camp that says “pay for it.” If everyone turned to piracy there’d be no future for entertainment; it wouldn’t be possible to keep creating new films, games, or shows if no one was paying for and supporting the creation of those projects. So with Paramount+ slowly stumbling its way towards its UK launch, almost by default I felt sure that I’d be signing up.
As a big Trekkie and someone who loves the Star Trek franchise, I want to be in a position of contributing to its success, even when Paramount Global as a corporation has misbehaved when it comes to international fans. The reason for that is pretty simple: I want Star Trek to be financially successful so that it’ll continue to be produced for many years to come. I don’t want to be a pirate, especially not when it comes to Star Trek. The fact that Paramount forced fans like me into piracy with their decisions over Discovery Season 4, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds remains a source of disappointment.
I want to see Star Trek succeed.
But now, with the cost of living and inflation biting me in the backside, I’m left wondering whether my best option in the short-term is to rely on my DVDs and Blu-rays for older shows and pirate the final few episodes of Strange New Worlds. By the time Paramount+ lands in the UK there will only be three weeks left in the first season of Strange New Worlds – and even if Prodigy or Lower Decks are going to be hot on its heels, it hardly seems worth signing up for a new subscription to get three episodes of a single series.
Perhaps I’m clutching at straws trying to justify accessing media that I can’t afford. Maybe it’s the curse of those of us on low and fixed incomes that, in a world of dozens of streaming subscriptions, it’s too expensive to be able to afford to watch everything. Do the cost of living crisis and inflation justify piracy? Is piracy, as some like to claim, a form of theft? If I can’t afford Paramount+, shouldn’t I find ways to cut other things out of my budget so that I can – and if I’m unable or unwilling to do that, shouldn’t I then stick to that commitment and stop watching these new Star Trek shows?
Piracy remains a tempting option.
These are some of the questions rolling around in my head at the moment! Maybe I should just shut up, review new episodes of Star Trek and whatever else, and let everyone reading assume that I paid for everything completely legitimately. But this website is my only real outlet for talking about some of these issues, and with the cost of living and inflation being big worries at the moment and weighing on my mind, I wanted to talk about it and not just cover it up and pretend like everything is fine.
This is far from the worst financial crisis I’ve personally had to deal with. Ever been so broke that you had “sleep for dinner?” I’ve been there. I’ve been to the supermarket with only a bunch of coins that I managed to scrounge up from pockets and down the back of the sofa, buying food for a couple of days without knowing when or how I’d be able to afford the next shop. And I’ve been in a position of turning off the heat and wearing a coat, gloves, and three pairs of socks in the living room in order to save money. Compared to that – and compared to what many folks are going through right now, too – having to choose between different streaming services because I can’t afford all of them… well it doesn’t exactly matter, does it?
I’ve been in worse financial positions at other points in my life…
But at the same time, there is a broader point here. Paramount+ is about to launch in an incredibly difficult market, one in which some of the biggest fans of the corporation’s most popular franchises are going to struggle to afford the service. The longer-term prospects of Paramount+, and whether it will ever be able to break into the top tier of streaming platforms alongside Netflix and Disney+, remains very much in question – and with that question comes fears for the longer-term sustainability of Star Trek. As a fan, that concerns me.
Decisions going back a decade or more on the part of big entertainment corporations have led to this point, and while the current jump in inflation and rise in the cost of living may have exposed some of these issues of affordability sooner than expected, it was inevitable that we’d reach this point in such an oversaturated marketplace. As a Star Trek fan I want to support Star Trek and I want the company that owns it and the platform on which it’s available to be financially successful – but I can’t commit to backing Paramount+ with a long-term subscription at the moment. If the cost of living crisis worsens in the months ahead – and with energy bills set to rise significantly in October, just in time for the winter, it very well may – I’ll be needing to cut back even more on the few services I already pay for, and there’ll be absolutely no place for anything new.
It’s a tough market, and Paramount Global’s many mistakes and offensive decisions have not endeared the corporation or its latest venture to the people who should be its biggest supporters. I wish Paramount+ well as a Star Trek fan who wants the franchise to succeed… but I’m unsure whether I’ll be able to make a long-term commitment to it right now.
Paramount+ is available in the United States, Scandinavia, Australia, and parts of Latin America now, with launches in the UK and South Korea in June 2022. Further international launch dates are yet to be announced. Paramount+ and the Star Trek franchise are owned by Paramount Global. Some stock images used above are courtesy of Pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I held off writing this for a while, even as the prospect of Strange New Worlds getting an international broadcast slipped further and further away. I didn’t want to jump the gun and come across as being too aggressive or too critical of Paramount Global – the corporation that owns and mismanages Star Trek. But with only a week to go, it’s patently obvious that Paramount has no plans whatsoever to broadcast Strange New Worlds outside of the United States and the handful of other countries where Paramount+ is available.
At the time of the Discovery Season 4 mess last November, I felt hopeful that the backlash from fans might’ve prevented this. But I guess I should’ve known better – this isn’t the first time we’ve been in this situation, after all. Lower Decks Season 1 was the first casualty of the Paramount board’s ineptitude. That show’s lack of an international broadcast in the summer of 2020 hurt it immeasurably.
The lack of an international broadcast in Season 1 did serious harm to Lower Decks.
Then came Prodigy Season 1 in 2021, another series with real prospects to expand the Star Trek franchise far beyond its usual fanbase. That opportunity was squandered by Paramount’s decision to withhold the series from international broadcast. That decision was made so much worse by the fact that Prodigy is branded as a Nickelodeon co-production – and with Nickelodeon channels available in well over 100 countries, fans were rightly asking why they couldn’t watch the show along with their American friends.
Finally, only a few weeks after the Prodigy mess came the Discovery Season 4 calamity. Paramount literally paid Netflix money out of its own pocket to take the show away, preventing fans all across the world from watching it. They announced this “deal” with barely 48 hours’ notice, leading to a massive backlash from fans and even some of the actors and creative team. You’d think they’d have learned a thing or two from that mess, especially when it tanked their share price.
You’d think Paramount might’ve learned something from the mess surrounding Discovery Season 4…
But alas, it’s only April 2022 – less than six months later – and here we are again. Paramount has decided that it doesn’t want its international fans to pay for Strange New Worlds – it would rather we pirated the show instead. Fine by me.
It’s not like there weren’t options if Paramount wanted to make Strange New Worlds available to international viewers. Here in the UK, for example, Paramount Global owns the following: Channel 5 and its associated channels 5Select, 5Action, 5USA, 5Star, and the My5 catch-up service, Nickelodeon and its associated channels Nick Jr. and Nicktoons, Comedy Central, MTV and five MTV spin-offs, the Horror Channel, the Smithsonian Channel, CBS Drama, CBS Justice, and CBS Reality. Several of these are free-to-air, with the others being available on subscription via cable or satellite providers.
In addition, Paramount Global owns PlutoTV, the online television network where Discovery Season 4 was made available. And speaking of Discovery Season 4, Paramount was able to make deals with Amazon Video, Google Play, and even YouTube to allow viewers in some countries to pay to watch. In short, Paramount Global could have made Strange New Worlds available. They had every opportunity and numerous options for doing so.
Paramount owns PlutoTV, which broadcast Discovery Season 4 here in the UK.
On top of all that, the Star Trek franchise has been subjected to some truly pathetic scheduling decisions over the past few months, and these schedules now seem even worse in light of the lack of an international broadcast for Strange New Worlds. Compounding the decision to cut off international fans, Prodigy’s first season has been butchered, cleaved into small chunks of episodes that have made it harder than necessary for the show to gain any kind of traction.
But worse is the situation with Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds. Why have these shows overlapped one another? Discovery and Picard ran concurrently for three weeks, and Picard’s season finale will be broadcast the same day as Strange New Worlds’ premiere. Why? If these three shows had been better-scheduled, split up by just a few weeks, then maybe there’d have been more time to get Paramount+ ready for the next phase of its international rollout. The UK and Europe have been promised Paramount+ by the end of Q2 – well that’s only a few weeks away, so if Picard Season 2 had been delayed by 4 weeks, and Strange New Worlds by another 3-4 weeks, maybe more fans would’ve been able to watch. How did this happen? And are the inept schedulers still making decisions? Seems like a firing offence to me.
Why wasn’t Picard Season 2 delayed?
By choosing not to take advantage of the global media empire that it literally owns, refusing to do deals with other corporations, and screwing up the scheduling of its own shows, Paramount has chosen to push fans toward piracy. Not only that, but the hurt and anger that has been generated by these decisions over the past couple of years will make it so much harder to convince fans to sign up for Paramount+ if the incompetently-managed service is ever ready to be rolled out.
Streaming platforms do not exist in a vacuum. The option fans have is not “pay for Paramount+ or don’t watch anything.” Piracy exists, and the only way that companies like Netflix and Disney have been able to make a success of the streaming model is by offering a good service at a low price. Paramount+ already fails the “good service” test – according to what I’m hearing from subscribers in the United States – so charging fans a higher price than Netflix, Amazon, or Disney for a worse product isn’t exactly going to incentivise folks to sign up.
Paramount+ is shit.
Despite that, when a film, television series, or video game is made available to watch, I’m firmly in the camp that says “pay for it.” I don’t want to be a pirate. From both a moral perspective and as a point of simple practicality, I believe that everyone from actors, writers, and directors to producers and executives should be paid for the work that they put into creating an entertainment product. But when a corporation takes that option away and piracy becomes the only way to access that content, then I’m all for it. In such cases as these, it is quite literally the only option.
That’s the position Paramount has placed fans in. They had options to broadcast Strange New Worlds on channels and networks that they owned from as far afield as Angola and Mozambique to the UK, Western Europe, and beyond… but they actively and willfully chose not to. They did so knowing that many fans wouldn’t wait for Paramount+… and if they didn’t realise that many of us would turn to piracy, then they’re even more incompetent and out of their depth than I thought.
The team in charge of Paramount+, apparently.
It’s become increasingly obvious that Paramount as a whole needs a good clear-out. 20th Century thinking is trying and failing to lead the corporation into the mid-21st Century, and executives and leaders clearly know nothing about a global media landscape that has been entirely transformed over the past couple of decades. Their attempt to launch their own streaming platform a decade too late in a massively competitive market was already a blunder all but certain to end in failure; the fact that Paramount+ is being handled so poorly is just hastening its demise. The anger and hurt caused to fans around the world – and not just fans of Star Trek, either, but fans of shows and franchises as diverse as Halo and iCarly – will be a weight around the corporation’s neck going forward. With inflation and other financial issues hitting hard in the short term, it’ll be ever more difficult to find subscribers for such a mediocre platform.
Paramount’s “America First” fetish would even make Donald Trump blush, and the corporation’s decision to gatekeep its own shows, segregating its audience geographically, is a colossal mistake. It’s one that Paramount+ may never recover from. And you know what? If a streaming platform with this level of ineptitude and mismanagement fails, it will deserve to fail. If a corporation with such a blinkered, short-sighted approach and an atrocious corporate attitude fails, it will deserve to fail too. My only concern as a fan of Star Trek is that Paramount+ may very well drag the Star Trek franchise down along with it.
Will Paramount+ drag Star Trek down the sewer?
The United States has been Paramount’s exclusive focus thus far, so much so that even when Paramount+ rolled out to countries like Australia, new episodes of shows like Prodigy weren’t broadcast there. Australian Trekkies who’d paid for Paramount+ were told that they’d have to wait for Discovery Season 4, and then Prodigy Season 1… so what exactly was the point of signing up? Did anyone at Paramount consider that question, or were they too fixated on America to care – or even notice?
I have tried my best to support Star Trek over the years. I signed up for Netflix in 2017 entirely because Discovery would be shown there, and I’ve likewise paid for Amazon Prime Video to watch Picard and Lower Decks. Over the span of more than thirty years I’ve bought Star Trek films and episodes on VHS, then the entire collection of every pre-2005 series on DVD, several on Blu-ray, and enough merchandise to sink a small boat. I’ve done my part to contribute financially to this franchise that I love… and even so, even with all the money I’ve already spent and all of the problems that I know Paramount+ has, I was ready to spend more. But Paramount saw fans like me offering up our cash and told us to fuck off.
Fans offered Paramount our cash… but they don’t want it.
The actors and the creative team who worked so hard to bring Strange New Worlds to life don’t deserve to find themselves in the middle of a stinking corporate mess, but in a way they’re caught in the crossfire. We should all be able to come together and celebrate the broadcast of a series that was only made possible because of Star Trek fans – many of whom are not American. But instead, we’re arguing about it. Strange New Worlds has become the latest in a line of own goals from Paramount, and there’s no way that the toxicity that they have created won’t spill over into criticisms of the show and everyone involved.
This mess could’ve been avoided. Paramount could have learned the lesson from just a few months ago, and spent the intervening time figuring out the best option for broadcasting Strange New Worlds in all of the different countries and territories around the globe. Instead they pissed away that time doing nothing of the sort, dragging the Star Trek fan community back to the same old arguments we had during the Discovery mess.
Paramount couldn’t possibly be doing more to encourage piracy of this new series.
Paramount has options to broadcast Strange New Worlds internationally, either on channels and platforms that it already owns or by agreeing licenses with other corporations. It has had more than enough time to figure out what to do, and should’ve been spurred into action by the clusterfuck surrounding Discovery Season 4. And failing all of that, Paramount has had weeks now in which to break the news to Trekkies; to tell us something and respond to the many questions that have been asked about the series. They’ve done none of that – and the explanation is simple. They don’t care about or respect any non-American fans or viewers.
So our recourse is piracy, as it always has been. When a corporation misbehaves like this, and treats its biggest fans and biggest supporters with such blatant disrespect, they haven’t just encouraged piracy, they deserve to have their shows pirated. They deserve the financial hit, the hit to viewing figures, and quite honestly, Strange New Worlds deserves to fail. Under this appalling team of corporate fuckwits, Star Trek as a whole will fail. And when we’re picking up the pieces in a few years’ time, asking where it all went wrong, we’ll be able to look back on these decisions and recognise that it was here that Paramount screwed up.
I constantly hope for better from Paramount – and I’m constantly let down. So I’m going to do what they clearly want me to do: I’m going to pirate Strange New Worlds. And you should too.
Piracy is probably against the rules where you live, so when you do pirate Strange New Worlds, do so carefully. Here’s where I’d usually tell you that the Star Trek franchise is someone’s copyright, but fuck it. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
About a month ago I built myself a brand-new PC. When I was making my plans and getting ready for the build, one of the choices I had was that of the operating system. With the exception of some very early lessons at school using a BBC Micro, and playing a few games on a Commodore 64 owned by a friend, I’ve always used Microsoft products. My first ever PC ran Windows 95, and I’ve used every version of Windows since, either for school, work, or at home. Although I’m not an expert by any means, I consider myself a pretty experienced Windows user!
Microsoft initially promised that Windows 10 would be the “final” version of their landmark operating system, with updates and tweaks but no replacement. This is what Apple has been doing for over twenty years with macOS (formerly known as OS X) so it seemed like something Microsoft could do as well. That promise lasted barely six years – less if we assume that Windows 11 must’ve been in development behind-the-scenes for a while – and before we go any further it’s worth acknowledging that. The broken promises surrounding Windows 10 will have quite understandably soured some people on Windows 11 before they even got started.
The first PC I owned ran a different version of Windows!
I found Windows 10 to be okay, but it had some issues. There were graphical bugs that only afflicted 4K screen resolutions, an unnecessarily complex set of menus and settings, lag on some Bluetooth devices, and more. I reported a few of these issues to Microsoft not long after upgrading to Windows 10… but they ignored all of them. If nothing else, I felt that upgrading to Windows 11 would at least simplify the experience, getting rid of the multiple settings menus and finally allowing me to display extra-large icons.
But alas, Windows 11 has to be the shoddiest “upgrade” I’ve ever come across. Windows 11 isn’t even akin to the upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, and practically all of my complaints and criticisms about Windows 10 remain in the operating system. At time of writing, Microsoft charges £120 for the Home version and £220 for the Pro version of Windows 11 – and there is no way in hell that it’s worth the money. You’re better off sticking with Windows 10 in the short-term.
Windows 11… it has TikTok!
As 4K screen resolutions have become more common, you’d think that Microsoft would allow Windows users to take full advantage of a good-looking display. Heck, Microsoft sells its own Surface products with 4K screens – and yet for some reason, incredibly basic things like extra-large icons don’t work with a 4K screen resolution. This issue was reported to Microsoft as early as 2017 – a full five years ago. Throughout the lifetime of Windows 10 they did nothing to fix it, and I’d given up on ever being able to use extra-large icons on Windows 10. But you’ll forgive me for thinking that such a basic, simple thing could’ve been included when a brand-new operating system was released.
Control Panel and Settings menus are also a major area of complaint. As early as Windows 8, Microsoft saw fit to include not one but two settings menus: the classic Control Panel and a new Settings menu. These two menus often overlap, and it can be exceptionally frustrating to be spending ages looking for something only to realise you can’t do it from the Settings menu and you have to go back to Control Panel – or vice versa. How difficult would it be to roll both menus into one? This is now the fourth operating system in a row to have this problem, and I know I’m not the only one bothered by it.
The Control Panel still exists… and still clashes with the Settings menu.
To me, the examples above show just how little care and effort Microsoft put into the development of Windows 11. There are a handful of new features – like the ability to install certain apps from Android, for instance – but nowhere near enough to justify the cost, nor even enough to justify calling Windows 11 a wholly new OS. It’s Windows 10.1 – a basic shell with a few new shiny features slapped carelessly atop Windows 10.
And that isn’t actually the worst part of it. Some of the “features” that Windows 11 has introduced has made the day-to-day experience of using the operating system significantly worse. One of the most basic features that I’ve used for years in Windows is the ability to see my scheduled calendar events at a single click. Click the bottom-right of the screen to pop open an expanded calendar, then click on a day to see what events are on the agenda. Windows 11 has taken away this phenomenally useful feature, forcing me to open the full calendar app.
The Widgets menu.
This is part of a trend that you’ll notice with Windows 11 from the very beginning: every feature, every useful little app, every widget… they’re all designed to push users to sign up for Outlook and OneDrive accounts. Even if you have a full Microsoft account – and using Windows 11 without one is pretty difficult, as basic things like changing to dark mode aren’t available to you in that case – Outlook and OneDrive are basically required to make the most of many Windows 11 features.
Want to see a slideshow of photos on the Photos widget? Tough luck, you need OneDrive for that. Want to check your schedule on the calendar without having to open the full app? Screw you, sign up for Outlook. This is Microsoft’s approach. To the corporation, it isn’t good enough that you’ve bought the OS; in order to use many of its most basic features they want to fully rope you into every Microsoft account, ecosystem, and most importantly, every possible subscription.
Windows 11 offers a lot of apps… but to take advantage of them you’ll need subscriptions and accounts.
Atop that there are some unnecessary cosmetic changes and menu changes that have again made doing everyday tasks complicated. Right-clicking now brings up a new, smaller menu, one which has replaced basic options like “Copy” and “Paste” with stupid little icons. In order to access really basic options that have been part of Windows for decades – like “Print,” for example – you need to right-click, then click to open a second options menu. Unnecessary menus hidden inside of menus seems to be one of the hallmarks of this underwhelming operating system.
Installing Windows 11 was not a smooth experience, either. Despite not actually being much more complex than Windows 10 in many respects – an OS that can run on most computers made in the last 15 years – Windows 11 has one of the biggest barriers to entry of any Microsoft release to date. By requiring a Trusted Platform Module (or TPM) Windows 11 is effectively off-limits to any PC more than four or five years old. Even pretty expensive PCs with good-quality components don’t comply with this requirement.
This is the screen that greeted me when I first tried to set up Windows 11.
One of the strangest bugs I’ve encountered so far is in the Event Viewer. While tracking down a particularly annoying problem that came about when I built my new PC, I noticed that the Event Viewer is completely flooded with the same message over and over and over again. At time of writing, my PC – which is less than two months old – has more than 20,000 instances of the same “DistributedCOM” warning. Microsoft’s official advice? That’s fine – it’s supposed to look like that!
Microsoft currently plans to end support for Windows 10 – a widely-adopted OS in light of the corporation’s promises that it would be the “final” Windows version – in late 2025, which is only three-and-a-half years away at time of writing! This cynical attempt to pressure users to upgrade is just disgraceful; previous versions of Windows lasted far longer after their successor systems were released. Support for Windows 7, for example, only ended two years ago, and Windows 8 and 8.1 are still supported at time of writing.
Windows 11 reminds me of Windows ME.
So that, in my experience so far, is Windows 11. It’s as if a team of some of the best software experts in the world sat down to create an operating system designed from the ground up with the sole objective of pissing me off – and they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
Windows 11 will be my operating system from this point forward – but only by default. Just like when I had Windows ME, Windows Vista, and Windows 8 and 8.1, I’ll begrudgingly tolerate it. But as soon as there’s a better OS available, I’ll take it. Windows 11 is, in my view, comparable to those failed experiments from Microsoft; the best thing I can say about it is that it may prove to be an incremental step on the way to something better.
We can but hope, right?
Windows 11 is available to purchase now. Windows 11, Windows, and all other properties mentioned above are the copyright of Microsoft Corporation. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
For a couple of years my PC had been in need of a refresh! I’m disabled and spend most of my time at home, and my PC has been everything for me over the last few years: entertainment centre, games console, workspace, and of course, the place where I write all of these articles and do all of the tasks here on the website! When 2021 rolled around I decided I needed to get my act together and get serious about an upgrade, and over the course of last year I put together a list and began to acquire the components for my new build piece by piece.
Though I perhaps know a little more about computers than your average consumer, I’m by no means an expert – as this article will surely attest. That’s why I’m not calling this a “build guide” or “how to build a PC!” There are plenty of far better-qualified people than me who’ve written step-by-step guides on how to do everything, and there are videos on YouTube too. I’d recommend Linus Tech Tips on YouTube, TechRadar’s step-by-step guide, and the Tom’s Hardware forum if you’re looking for that kind of detail – and I’ll include links to all three at the end of this article. I’m writing this for the website to share my experience as a newbie to PC building – and because I enjoy writing!
I’m no expert, so if you’re looking for a detailed guide you’ll have to go elsewhere!
First of all, it took longer than I’d hoped to get everything in place. I kicked off this project just over a year ago, in early 2021, and I hoped to have made upgrades to my old PC by the summer. I then changed my plans and decided to build an entirely new machine from scratch, adding extra time to the project, but I still had hoped to be finished well before Christmas. In the end it was mid-March that I finally got it done – and there’s one additional task that I’ll aim to complete perhaps later this year or early next year, depending on how things go.
When I set out to build my PC I thought I knew the basics; which components I’d need and roughly how much I’d need to spend on them. But what hit me later on were all of the hidden costs, extras, and accessories: things like additional cables, an extra fan, a new DisplayPort cable, a new surge protector, screwdrivers, a static wrist strap, thermal compound, thermal pads, and so on. Because I’ve also changed where I sit and the orientation of my PC, I’ve also needed to invest in a new monitor arm and additional storage under the table that my PC rests on. All of these smaller things added up and delayed the project by at least a month!
Picking up hidden extras like new cables added to the cost.
Because I’ve never had a lot of money, I’ve always chosen to invest in items that I feel are higher-quality and stand a good chance of lasting a long time. The cheapest products aren’t always the best value or longest-lasting, as I’m sure you’ve discovered for yourself! With that in mind, I sought out components with excellent reviews, and even a single negative review about a product or the company’s customer service was enough to send me into a tailspin as I pondered the upsides and potential drawbacks. This also added a lot of time to the project!
This time around I chose to go with an AMD Ryzen CPU, specifically a third-gen Ryzen 7 5800x 8-core processor. After more than a decade of Intel’s dominance in the processor space, AMD’s Ryzen chips began getting rave reviews a few years ago, and it seemed like the best fit. I’m not wildly into overclocking nor do I intend to push the chip far beyond its limits – but I wanted to get something that I thought would be high-quality, fast, and that would really show off what a modern PC is capable of.
My new CPU.
About a decade ago I suffered a major internet outage that left me reeling! For more than six weeks I remained disconnected, growing increasingly frustrated – and increasingly bored. When I got back online I ordered an external hard drive, and on that drive I installed a number of games, made backups of my DVDs, and so on so I’d always have something to do if I was ever in that situation again. I got a second external drive somewhere along the line too, and my workspace has been cluttered with drives, wires, and power cables for the past few years.
With my new PC, I wanted to ditch the external drives altogether. I don’t go places, I don’t have other computers I might want to plug into, so their presence was just an annoyance! With that in mind I installed two drives in my new PC: an M.2 drive to serve as my main C: drive, where Windows is installed, where other software and apps can be installed, and where I can install most of the games I’d want to play, and a second large hard disk where I can keep all of my stored DVD and Blu-ray rips.
Good old DVD box sets…
I chose a Sabrent Rocket M.2 drive for my new PC’s primary drive – again, on the back of reviews and recommendations – and a large Seagate Exos hard disk for my secondary drive. It should be possible to install games on the second drive as well, if space becomes an issue on the M.2 in future, which is also a nice feature to have. Redundancy is the name of the game in that case!
This is my first experience with an M.2 drive. My old PC had a SATA SSD, but it was a very cheap one that never seemed to be especially fast. I think it was a Kingston model, and it was pretty small as well. Basically everything except for Windows – including my collection of MP3s and photos – ended up on an external drive.
My new M.2 SSD.
This might be the most controversial part of the build, but I went for RAM overkill: 64GB of DDR4 RAM. The RAM can be clocked to 3600MHz, which is apparently recommended for Ryzen chips, though out of the box it ran much slower. 64GB of RAM is complete overkill for practically any modern system, so I’m told, but last year I was thinking about getting into YouTube – I had a short-lived foray into podcasting – so I thought I might need the extra if I got serious about video editing or other RAM-intensive tasks.
I chose a decent motherboard to go with all of these components – a “gaming” model from MSI. I also invested in a power supply from Be Quiet that’s rated 80 Plus Titanium – the highest rating available from the premiere ratings organisation for these kinds of things. I don’t pretend to know the exact details of what makes a “Titanium” better than a “Bronze,” but I think it’s to do with power efficiency, particularly during periods of heavy use. It seemed worthwhile to spend the extra money on something more efficient, though, and I made sure to choose a power supply that could more than handle all of the components I was putting into the machine.
The motherboard I chose.
Here’s a problem that I wager most users won’t have to factor in: cats! I have several cats, and they have a tendency to jump on my PC case. With my old machine, I found that the inconveniently-located power button meant that they were frequently turning my PC off with their paws when jumping or walking on the case, so I wanted to choose a new case with a power button either on the front or at least not flat on top. Most cases nowadays seem to have that kind of design; the “old days” of horizontal cases or power buttons on the vertical front of the case seem to be long-gone!
I chose a Be Quiet case in the end; the power button is still near the top, but it’s located on a sloping panel that means my cats could jump up and down without disturbing it or accidentally switching me off halfway through writing an article… or halfway through the latest episode of Star Trek! The Be Quiet Dark Base 900 is a much larger case than my previous machine, but I think that means that there should be good airflow for keeping all of the components cool.
This is what I mean.
The CPU cooler that I chose was also based on reviews and recommendations: I went with a Noctua NH-D15. I debated using a water cooler – one of the all-in-one systems – but ever since I knew a fellow PC builder who ruined his entire system when his homemade water cooling system sprang a leak… let’s just say I’ve been put off! I know that today’s all-in-one water coolers are probably safe to use – far safer than the janky piece of crap my feckless friend built in his basement 20+ years ago – but even so, I felt that an air cooler was the way to go. The Noctua NH-D15 is one of the best-reviewed setups on the market, and it has recently been updated with a special AMD Ryzen mounting bracket, so that was the version I picked up.
I chose to add one PCIe card – a WiFi and Bluetooth antenna. I don’t care about the WiFi particularly as I’ve always preferred to use ethernet for my stationary PC, but I wanted to add Bluetooth functionality. I use a Bluetooth keyboard and I have a couple of other Bluetooth devices that I thought I might try to connect, and considering that it wasn’t hugely expensive to add it in, it seemed worthwhile.
The Bluetooth card.
With prices for graphics cards having been sky-high for years, I knew from the start that I would recycle my current one rather than wait months only to pay over-inflated prices. When my GPU crapped out on me a couple of years ago I replaced it with a modern GTX 1660, so it’s not like it’s a horribly outdated component. It would be lovely to back up all of that new hardware with a ray-tracing graphics card that can really take advantage of modern games… but one thing at a time! That’s an upgrade that I hope to get around to either later this year or next year, depending on prices and how well my PC performs.
So those were the main pieces that I chose. It took a while to back up all my files (and double-back up the most important ones because I’m paranoid like that), but eventually I’d done as much as I could, procrastinated long enough, and was ready to get to building!
I scavenged this graphics card from my old machine. It’ll do for now!
I’m absolutely certain that building a PC in 2022 is significantly easier than it would’ve been fifteen or twenty years ago. Most components slot into place, there are step-by-step guides and video tutorials on how to do everything, and even the instructions that came with the components were easy to understand.
I started by taking the motherboard out of its box, strapping on my anti-static wristband and grounding myself, and making sure I had my new screwdriver kit at the ready! Installing the RAM was the task I chose to do first – it’s something I’d done before and I knew exactly what I was doing. From there I installed the M.2 drive and its heatsink, and then the task I was probably most nervous about: the processor itself.
My chosen RAM.
How many horror stories have you seen of bent pins, misaligned chips, and other CPU disasters? I couldn’t tell easily which way the chip was supposed to be oriented; the little triangle that’s supposed to indicate that was incredibly small and blended in. But after checking, double-checking, and psyching myself up for it, I gingerly placed the chip in its awaiting hole… and we had success! Nothing was broken, no pins snapped off, and nothing blew up. Phew!
Next I applied a small amount of thermal compound (I went with Kryonaut’s “Thermal Grizzly” paste instead of the stock one from Noctua). Doing what I’d seen others do on video, I laid out a small drip of the stuff, no larger than a grain of rice, and then secured the cooler in place. It amazes me that such a large cooler is okay; it looks like it’s hanging there, suspended in mid-air!
The thermal paste I used.
Having done about as much as I could with the motherboard outside of the case, I next had to grab the case itself and start installing the power supply. The Be Quiet power supply that I chose came with a large number of cables, not all of which I ended up using. Some of the cables look very similar to one another, so it took a while to make sure I’d got each one in the right place!
I installed the motherboard, screwing it into the appropriate standoffs in the case. Then I slowly began plugging in each of the various cables, including a bunch of wires that had been dangling inside of the case when I opened it up! I installed the hard disk in the lower corner of the case, and removed all of the other hard disk trays that I’m not using (I’ll hang onto them in case I ever want to add in another drive or something). I hope this will result in slightly better airflow.
A lantern came in handy for extra light – the inside of the case was very dark.
All that was left was to install the GPU and the Bluetooth card in the two PCIe slots. Having done that, which didn’t take very long at all, I checked my watch and was surprised to see it had only been about ninety minutes! Thinking to myself that I’d done a good job, I grabbed a Dr Pepper and went in for a victory sip while the cats sat idly by and watched. To my surprise none of them tried to interfere while I was working… good cats!
But I was far from done, as it turned out. After double-checking every connection and component, I plugged in the PC and hit the power button… and nothing happened. Oh god, panic time! What have I done wrong? How can I even test to see what’s happening if literally nothing is happening?! After a moment of abject panic I tried to think back… what could have gone wrong? Why would absolutely nothing at all happen when I hit the power button?
My reaction!
After checking the very obvious things – was the power supply switched on, was the cable plugged in, was the surge protector turned on, etc. – I honed in on the problem: the power button itself. The power button had to be connected to the motherboard using a two-pin cable, and the connection had to be in a specific orientation (as denoted by a plus and minus symbol). I’d installed it back to front. After reversing the power switch connector I tried again, and to my joy and relief the system sprang to life!
All of the fans seemed to be spinning, and after reaching the BIOS it seemed like everything was showing up: the system detected the existence of its USB ports, its M.2 drive, its hard drive, it had the right amount of RAM… everything seemed to be right where it should be, so I shut it down and prepared to install Windows 11.
My operating system of choice. Ha.
Ugh. Windows 11. We’ll have to talk about this in more detail on another occasion, but for now suffice to say that Windows 11 appears to have been designed by a team of software experts at Microsoft who were given the explicit brief of creating an operating system that embodies every aspect of the word “irritating.” They succeeded beyond their wildest ambitions.
I was told at first that “This PC can’t run Windows 11!” thanks to the ridiculous hardware requirements that Microsoft placed on the new OS. I knew that wasn’t right, because the Ryzen 5800X has the required module to be able to run Windows 11. However, this security feature is not enabled in the BIOS by default, so I had to go in and turn it on manually. Having completed this task, Windows 11 happily installed at the second time of asking.
The screen that greeted me first time around.
That should have been the end of the affair, but there was one final twist in this tale of amateur-hour PC building! A couple of days after putting everything together, slapping myself on the back, and calling it a job well done, the new PC began experiencing random crashes. There would be no warning, no blue screen… just an instant shutdown as if the power had been cut. I was very worried!
These shutdowns produced no error messages worth their salt, just a very basic message in the Windows Event Viewer that said nothing about the cause. After spending a long time on Google and chasing down replies to years-old posts on forums, I tried as many different software fixes as I could find: updated drivers, uninstalled programmes, rolled back Windows updates, re-installed every driver one by one, updated the motherboard BIOS, deleted installed apps… nothing worked. The shutdowns continued, and they seemed to be getting worse. At one point, the system tried and failed to boot five times in a row; it wouldn’t even make it as far as the desktop before losing power.
This was all I could see in the Event Viewer.
After a lot of digging around, which the vagueness of the error message (and the fact that Windows 11’s Event Viewer is cluttered with warnings that Microsoft says are totally fine) did not help, I eventually relented and opened up the case again to see if there could be a hardware problem. It didn’t seem like a typical hardware issue – if there was a nonfunctional or broken component, I would have expected to see this problem from the very first moment I put the system together, not starting days later after everything had been going smoothly.
Every component appeared to be securely in place; the CPU cooler wasn’t falling off, all the cables were plugged into the power supply securely, and the power supply itself seemed to be in good working order. Running out of options I did something that really isn’t recommended – poking around inside the case while the system was powered on. I poked and prodded at the various components as safely as I could, and eventually I hit upon the problem – the cable connecting the power supply to the CPU was just slightly loose. The tiniest bump or prod on this connection switched the system off in exactly the same fashion as I’d been experiencing.
A simple loose connection between the power supply and the CPU was the cause of the problem.
Rerouting the cable in question, and tying it as securely as I could to the inside of the case, seems to have solved the problem. I can only assume that it came loose in the first place thanks to a combination of my amateur workmanship leaving it susceptible to the smallest of knocks… and the cats jumping on top of the case! They didn’t jump on the new case for a couple of days as they were wary of this new addition to the room, but I think their jumping must’ve been just enough to loosen this CPU power cable and cause those irritating random shutdowns. At time of writing it’s been just over a week since I rerouted the cable and the problem has not returned.
So that’s my PC building journey. It was an interesting experience, and while I can’t honestly say that I saved a lot of money by buying my own components, what I can say is that I got exactly the PC that I wanted. I got to choose every part, I got to make sure that I got components that met my requirements – or the requirements I thought I had, at least! – and I got a new experience out of it, too. At my age, brand-new experiences are few and far between!
One of the guilty kitties!
If you’re looking for a recommendation, I’d say that building a PC isn’t for the total beginner. Sure, most components snap together easily enough, and anyone who’s ever built a Meccano set would be able to do that part of it with a few basic tools and the instructions. But knowing where to begin, and where to look in the event of things not going exactly as planned… that required some background knowledge on the basics of how PCs work. If you’ve taken an interest in technology, though, and you know the difference between a CPU and a GPU, or which way around fans should be pointing, then I’d say it’s a fun project – but it is a project, and that requires some degree of effort, preparation, troubleshooting, and an ability to Google your way to solutions!
I’m glad I attempted this project, and hopefully the new PC will tide me over for the next few years with no trouble. I have vague plans, as mentioned, to get a ray-tracing graphics card in the months ahead, but for now I’m satisfied. I’ve copied over all of my files and backups, and I’ve started installing a few games to play – including a couple of titles that my old PC struggled to get running.
Stay tuned for a review of Windows 11 in the days ahead, because I definitely have some thoughts on Microsoft’s latest operating system. Some very critical thoughts!
Windows 11. It has TikTok!
Below you can find a list of the components that I used to build my new PC.
Power Supply: Be Quiet! Dark Power 12 850 Watt Fully Modular 80+ Titanium
I’m not an expert and this article is not intended as advice or a guide. You are solely responsible for the outcome if you choose to build your own PC, and I accept no responsibility for any damage or destruction that may result. Some stock images used above are courtesy of Pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There may be minor spoilers present for some of the entries on this list.
I confess that I was excited for Hogwarts Legacy when it was announced a couple of years ago. I wasn’t aware, at that time, of J.K. Rowling’s harmful and hurtful transphobic stance, and when the game was announced I felt that it had potential. Fast-forward a couple of years and a recent gameplay reveal video has got a lot of fans excited. I would probably have been among them a few years ago; while I was never really “in” the Harry Potter fandom, I enjoyed the books and films generally speaking. But I can’t support Hogwarts Legacy – nor anything else in the Harry Potter series any longer.
J.K. Rowling doesn’t have anything besides Harry Potter. She’s had limited success with the other titles she’s tried her hand at, so it’s the Harry Potter series that keeps her relevant – and it continues to be a major revenue stream for someone who’s already a billionaire. Any time the Harry Potter series gets attention, it amplifies J.K. Rowling, increasing her platform, her reach, and ensuring her harmful transphobic views are amplified, spread worldwide, and discussed at length. Moreover, it brings in money for her, some of which she donates to anti-trans activists and groups. I don’t know exactly what cut of the proceeds she’d get for Hogwarts Legacy – but it’ll be significant. If the game sells millions of copies she could easily rake in several million pounds from it.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.
For some folks, Harry Potter is their biggest fandom and a huge part of their life. If you’re in that category, I hope you won’t consider this a personal attack. I know that J.K. Rowling’s statements have upset a lot of people, many of whom continue to consider themselves fans of the series. If Harry Potter meant a lot to you and you can’t abandon it, that’s your decision and I’m not interested in trying to change your mind.
I’m not going to re-hash all of the arguments surrounding J.K. Rowling and her transphobia here. I don’t have the time nor am I in the right emotional headspace for that. You already know what she’s said, why people like me find it incomprehensible and harmful, and reiterating all of those points would just lead to all of us getting upset all over again. Instead what I want to do today is offer up a few alternative games, titles that are just as interesting and exciting as Hogwarts Legacy but with hopefully less bigotry.
So without further ado, here are a few games you could substitute Hogwarts Legacy with if you’re looking for something fun to play but feel unable to support J.K. Rowling. Let’s jump into the list, shall we?
Game #1: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
A game set in an established fictional world, but taking place hundreds of years prior to the events we know and love? That sounds an awful lot like Knights of the Old Republic! I can never fully put into words how much this game blew me away when it was released in 2003. After feeling disappointed with The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, Knights of the Old Republic went a long way to restoring my faith in Star Wars in general – and one of its story twists is perhaps the greatest that I’ve ever played through in any video game.
Knights of the Old Republic sent me off on my very own Star Wars adventure, and included all of the elements that a story needs to feel truly authentic. Whether it was Jedi Knights, beeping droids, or visiting familiar worlds like Tatooine or Kashyyyk, it was an incredible ride from beginning to end.
It took me a while to get around to trying Red Dead Redemption II, but when I played through it last year I finally understood why everyone considers it to be a masterpiece. It’s a dark, bleak, yet incredibly beautiful experience, one which recreates late 19th Century America in a way that feels incredibly real. Characters feel like actual people with thoughts, desires, and motivations, and the narrative contains some incredibly emotional sequences that left me in tears.
Red Dead Redemption II is also one of the most visually stunning games I’ve ever played. Its open world has been crafted to perfection, and is packed full of minor details that make the experience an incredibly immersive one. I literally had dreams about Red Dead Redemption II while I was in the middle of the story, and there were times last year where I would want to just drop everything I was doing to get back to playing it!
Game #3: Kena: Bridge of Spirits
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is another visually beautiful game, so much so that at one point I had to put down the control pad and just stare at the amazing scenery! It’s also an incredibly fun adventure game that I felt recaptured the feel of older 3D platformers. It wasn’t always an easy experience, as there was relatively little hand-holding, but it was incredibly fun and incredibly rewarding.
Considering that Kena: Bridge of Spirits was the debut game from brand-new developer Ember Lab, I’m even more impressed! I crowned it my “game of the year” for 2021, and with good reason. It was one of the best gaming experiences that I had last year, and even though I have a growing list of unplayed games… I’m sorely tempted to go back and revisit it!
Game #4: Control
If a supernatural adventure is what you’re after, look no further than Control. I found the game to be incredibly atmospheric as protagonist Jesse explores a hauntingly bleak world. I definitely got sucked into the spooky world of Control, and this could make for a really fun game to play around the Halloween season thanks to the supernatural tone and some spectacular level design.
Control is also an incredibly accessible game, with lots of different options to customise and tweak the experience. One of my favourite parts of Control were the full-motion video sequences, presented in-game as recordings and clips to collect as Jesse explores deeper into the heart of the ancient and deeply unsettling building. These little snippets of lore, presented in a fun way, added so much to the experience.
Game #5: Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
It’s been a few years since I played Dragon’s Dogma, but if I recall correctly the game has a surprisingly deep and rich magic system – something you might be looking for in an alternative to Hogwarts Legacy. Dragon’s Dogma always felt like a second-tier game; the kind of title that didn’t quite break into the uppermost echelons of gaming. But it was a fun time nevertheless, and a fun adventure to play through.
The Dark Arisen version – which is available for PC, Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 – combined the base game and all of its DLC into a single package, and as a slightly older game (Dragon’s Dogma was originally released in 2012) it can be picked up quite inexpensively either second-hand or during Steam sales.
Game #6: Elden Ring
Elden Ring is categorically not “my thing.” These kinds of difficult-for-the-sake-of-it games are simply unenjoyable for me, and as a result I have skipped Elden Ring. But I’d be remiss not to include one of the biggest releases of the year on a list like this, and many fans of the Souls-like genre have hailed it as an instant classic and the new benchmark for future titles to live up to.
Elden Ring uses an open world, it has magic, fantasy elements, and monsters to fight. It was originally billed as a game with input from A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin, though he appears to have made a limited impact on what seems to me to be another Dark Souls-inspired title. If you’re into games with punishing levels of difficulty, Elden Ring could be the one for you.
Game #7: The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim
So you want to enrol in a special school to learn how to wield magic while at the same time exploring the world and going on adventures? Then why not join the Mage’s Guild in Skyrim? Or, come to that, why not do the same in Oblivion or join House Telvanni Morrowind as well? The entire Elder Scrolls series is set up perfectly for players who want to create mages, witches, necromancers, and all other kinds of magic-using characters!
Skyrim is certainly showing its age by now, even if you pick up one of the special enhanced deluxe anniversary editions that have been released endlessly over the past decade. But it’s still a beautiful game that’s fun to play, and many of its questlines and stories have a magical side that might just make up for skipping over Hogwarts Legacy.
Game #8: Jade Empire
Jade Empire is a fun BioWare adventure game that I feel doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Released in between Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, it tends to be overlooked. Its Chinese-inspired setting is really interesting, though, and the game is populated with fun characters. There are magical elements to the game, too, although there’s a pretty big focus on martial arts-inspired combat.
Jade Empire tells a fun story, and I found it easy to get lost in its world when I first picked up the game on the original Xbox. If you’ve played other BioWare titles before then the format will be familiar – but the setting and the story are unique. I’ve always hoped that BioWare would revisit the world of Jade Empire… maybe one day!
Game #9: GreedFall
GreedFall is another game that can feel overlooked, perhaps a game that didn’t quite break into the top tier when it was released a couple of years ago. It can feel like a title with some heavy-handed themes as it looks at the issue of colonialism – not always perfectly, I should say – but laying atop some of those deeper themes is a fun adventure in a well-constructed, lived-in world.
There are magic spells in GreedFall, with an entire character class built around the use of magic. The game’s character creator is pretty basic, but if you can look past that limitation the actual customisation options are quite extensive. It’s a fun game, and well worth a play especially considering that it doesn’t ask full price.
Game #10: The Last Of Us Part II
I honestly didn’t expect to be putting The Last Of Us Part II on any list… ever! I didn’t enjoy the game’s story at all, as I felt it tried to be too smug, too clever, and the way in which it hacked away at some of the most basic fundamentals of storytelling – the need to have a clear protagonist and antagonist – meant the whole narrative collapsed. But if you’re really looking for a game to throw up a middle finger to a transphobe, The Last Of Us Part II could be right for you!
Despite my story complaints, the gameplay in The Last Of Us Part II is excellent. Its third-person stealth/action style is an iterative improvement over its predecessor, but it’s well-executed and feels very smooth to play. There’s also a sense of scarcity, with ammunition and supplies being hard to come by. This makes for an experience that requires a lot of thoughtful planning; rushing in guns-blazing usually doesn’t work.
As one of the few games I can recall to feature a transgender character in a major role (voiced by Star Trek: Discovery’s Ian Alexander) I felt it was worth including The Last Of Us Part II on this list.
So that’s it!
Those are ten games that I think could be worth playing if, like me, you plan to skip Hogwarts Legacy when it’s released later this year. I tried to look at titles that are in the third-person action or action/adventure space, as well as titles with magic or supernatural elements. There were plenty of other games that I could’ve included if we broadened those criteria, though, so this is by no means an exhaustive list!
I had a conversation with a friend recently, and they expressed the opinion that they would play Hogwarts Legacy as there aren’t a lot of games that would give them a similar experience. While it’s true that Harry Potter and the Wizarding World are somewhat unique, there are plenty of games – as well as novels, films, television shows, and other entertainment experiences – that draw on many of the same themes and use the same kinds of storytelling elements. Hogwarts Legacy, just like the rest of the fictional setting that J.K. Rowling created, is not irreplaceable.
That being said, I’m not here to try to force anyone to play or not play a particular game. I just wanted to contribute something positive to the overall conversation surrounding Hogwarts Legacy, and perhaps show off a few titles in a similar genre or similar space that players who are weighing up their options could consider as alternatives. If that applies to you, I hope you at least found my suggestions interesting! And if you still plan to go ahead and play Hogwarts Legacy, I genuinely hope you have a good time with the game.
Hogwarts Legacy is the copyright of Portkey Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Harry Potter and the Wizarding World are trademarks of Warner Bros. Entertainment. All titles on the list above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Here we go again. When Trekkies all over the world should be talking with boundless enthusiasm and unbridled passion about the latest Star Trek announcements, we’re slapped down hard by ViacomCBS – sorry, that should be “Paramount” or “Paramount Global” now – and the corporation’s latest mess. I’m genuinely getting worried for the medium-to-long-term prospects of the Star Trek franchise under the corporation’s current leadership.
Just when I thought ViacomCBS had hit rock bottom with the Discovery Season 4 debacle, paying Netflix to remove the show internationally and preventing fans outside the United States from being able to watch, the corporation has, through sheer ingenuity, managed to sink even lower. Using outdated copyright laws and social media platforms’ heavy-handed DMCA policies to actively attack Trekkies is the latest move; a new low for a corporation that I naïvely assumed could sink no lower.
We need to support Trek Central and other fans who have had their accounts attacked by ViacomCBS. If you’re on Twitter, the hashtag #FreeTrekCentral is the place to be.
ViacomCBS (or whatever it wants to rebrand itself as now) is a corporation that has consistently failed to move with the times. It’s a corporation where 20th Century thinking is trying – and failing – to lead it into the 21st Century, and that’s the poisoned well from which all of these ridiculous, outdated, and harmful policies continue to flow. ViacomCBS has an “America First” fetish that would make even Donald Trump blush, brazenly ignoring fans outside of the United States – even going so far as to point-blank refuse to broadcast brand-new episodes on international versions of its own streaming platform, Paramount+. When will this end?
An investor event today – which was live-streamed on social media – showed off a new teaser trailer for Strange New Worlds, the upcoming Star Trek series bringing back Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike. Yet ViacomCBS then went on the attack, literally getting some fans’ social media accounts banned for daring to share still frames and screencaps of the trailer. At time of writing, the trailer itself has yet to be published on any of the official Star Trek social media channels, meaning fans know it’s out there but have no lawful way to access it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see the Strange New Worlds trailer?
There was also “news” – and I use that term in its loosest possible sense – about the painfully constipated rollout of Paramount+ internationally. We knew as early as the middle of last year that the planned launch window for the UK was “early-to-mid 2022,” so today’s so-called “announcement” that the mediocre streaming service will arrive “before the end of Q2” means absolutely nothing. The lack of so much as an attempt at precise timing, or even a narrower window, does not fill me with confidence.
Strange New Worlds – the show whose trailer is now being deliberately hidden and used as a pretext to attack fans on social media – is due to premiere in the United States in early May. The end of the second quarter of the year (or “Q2” in corporate-speak) is at the end of June. Assuming Paramount+ remains on what we could generously call its “schedule,” that seems to suggest that very few Trekkies outside of the United States will be able to watch the show.
The real Paramount+ slogan, apparently.
And if Paramount+ repeats what it tried to do with Discovery Season 4 and successfully did with Prodigy Season 1, then even being a Paramount+ subscriber might not be enough to guarantee that non-American Trekkies will be able to watch Strange New Worlds anyway. In both of those cases, Paramount+ outside of the United States didn’t broadcast new episodes at the same time as they were broadcast in the United States. Paramount+ is already a second-tier streaming service on a good day, but if it gates off its own original content outside of North America, what exactly is the point in becoming a subscriber? Maybe someone at ViacomCBS should ponder that question.
Every time I think we’re starting to see signs of progress, it feels like ViacomCBS takes one step forward and at least two steps back. The corporation has no clue how to act in a 21st Century media landscape that has shifted under its feet, and despite having its own streaming platform for over seven years (CBS All Access launched in late 2014) there’s been no evidence so far that the corporation knows how to successfully operate it, let alone how to bring it to audiences around the world.
Paramount+ will struggle under current management.
I want to support Star Trek. I want to offer my financial backing (in whatever small way I can) to ensure that the franchise continues to be successful and will continue to be produced. And there are some positive signs – Paramount+ has been adding new subscribers, Discovery has been its best-performing series, and shows like Halo and Yellowstone have attracted attention and been picked up for additional seasons. But like I said, for every step forward, there are two steps back. The reputation of ViacomCBS remains in the sewer with many of Star Trek’s biggest fans, and rebranding under a new name won’t fix that.
Social media is the biggest and most important way for any entertainment corporation to get its message out and to bring in new audiences and new subscribers. Look at shows as diverse as Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, Tiger King, and Squid Game. Social media buzz and hype were a huge factor in their success, and why they blew up far beyond their anticipated audiences to become absolutely massive. When ViacomCBS mistreats its biggest fans so badly on social media, and when its own social media marketing strategy is so painfully inadequate, it actively harms the potential success of Star Trek – and all of its other programmes.
Photo of the ViacomCBS board.
I noted this with disappointment in 2020 when Lower Deckswas denied an international broadcast, and again in 2021 when the same thing happened to Prodigy. The two most different and interesting Star Trek projects in a generation had practically unlimited potential to expand the franchise and bring in boatloads of new fans – but because ViacomCBS chose to carve them up, deciding for itself which viewers were “worthy” of being allowed to watch the new shows, that potential was wasted.
When ViacomCBS cuts off its own shows at the knees, it doesn’t just harm their potential success in the rest of the world. It harms it in the United States as well. Social media is worldwide, and if fans in the rest of the world aren’t able to participate, the potential buzz and online chatter dies down. The hype bubble deflates, hashtags don’t trend, social media algorithms don’t pick up or promote posts, and untold numbers of potential fans and viewers miss out. They never even come to hear that Lower Decks, Prodigy, or Strange New Worlds exist because ViacomCBS made sure that millions of Star Trek fans don’t talk about them online.
Prodigy remains unavailable to most fans around the world.
Attacking fans is a new low, and rebuilding trust between ViacomCBS and Trekkies should be top priority for the corporation as it moves forward. It won’t be, but it should be. But there are more problems deeply-rooted within ViacomCBS and its corporate attitude, one which puts “America First” with vigour. That kind of thinking was outdated by the turn of the millennium, and fixing it is going to be essential to the future success of Paramount+.
One way that the corporation could win back fans’ support would be to guarantee that Strange New Worlds won’t be broadcast until Paramount+ has been rolled out to more countries. If there’s a delay in the rollout, there should be a delay in the new show as well. I’m sure some American Trekkies would be disappointed, but others wouldn’t mind waiting an extra few weeks or months if it means more Trekkies will be able to join in. It would be good for the fan community, and for the reasons mentioned above it would be good for Strange New Worlds’ prospects, too.
Strange New Worlds will premiere in May… if you’re lucky.
As for me, I remain extremely disappointed with Star Trek’s corporate overlords. If Strange New Worlds doesn’t come to the UK at the same time as it does in the United States, we end up right back in the piracy debate. I feel fans have an absolute moral justification to go right ahead and pirate it – if ViacomCBS chooses not to make it available lawfully, piracy becomes the only way to access the show. I will certainly have no qualms about going down that road.
But if Strange New Worlds doesn’t come to the UK, why should I cover it? In my own small way on my little corner of the internet, I offer the Star Trek franchise what amounts to free publicity, talking about shows and sharing my passion. It would feel wrong to offer my support to a series that ViacomCBS has, for what would be the third time in as many years, tried to deny to millions of fans around the world.
My message to the board and leadership at ViacomCBS (or Paramount as it’s now going to be known) is simple: do better. Treat your fans with basic respect, stop abusing outdated copyright laws, fix your social media marketing, find a way to bring your shows to the millions upon millions of fans who are literally opening our wallets and offering you our cash, and if you can’t do all of that, then get out of the way and make room for other people who can. Your intransigence and outdated thinking have already caused immeasurable harm to Star Trek, so you need to fix those things – before it’s too late.
The Star Trek franchise – including all properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS/Paramount. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
If you’ve been a regular reader since last year, you might remember that I pre-ordered Starlink – Elon Musk’s satellite internet. I did so in large part because I live in a rural part of the UK that has been overlooked by fibre broadband, 4G, and basically every other improvement to the country’s ageing, decrepit communications infrastructure. I have broadband, which some rural dwellers still don’t, so in that sense I’m lucky – but my download speed at the best of times caps out at around 7 megabits/second, and at bad times I can barely get online at all.
Starlink originally promised to be available in “mid to late 2021,” before revising that to “early to mid 2022.” I would say, as an aside, that Starlink was very poor at communicating that change to me, and for much of 2021 I was holding out hope that I’d hear something from the company, especially because I’d paid a fairly hefty deposit. Better communication with customers may be something for Starlink to work on, at least from my limited experience with the company!
Starlink is a satellite internet company.
But I’m no longer going to be enjoying ultra-fast space-age internet. I recently cancelled my pre-order – and not because of any complaints about the company or the slowness of their rollout. I can understand that things get delayed, that the queue was long, and when you’re dealing with something as complex as literally launching rockets full of satellites into space, there are going to be bumps in the road sometimes! I’m not a “Karen,” feeling a sense of entitlement, and I want to make that clear.
Unfortunately, though, in 2022 I’m no longer in a position to be able to afford Starlink. The service would cost a little over three times the price of my current internet package, and with rising bills across the board, I can no longer guarantee that I could afford to pay that amount. I certainly wouldn’t want to sign myself up to a contract, committing to pay that money for twelve or eighteen months.
I definitely won’t be signing up for any long-term contracts right now!
Since mid-2020, my electricity bill has already risen by over 25%. That isn’t because I’m using any more electricity – in fact, thanks to things like LED lightbulbs and a better, more efficient heater, I’m probably using less. But the UK’s privatised electricity industry has been jacking up prices left, right, and centre. And that was before the current increase in oil and gas prices internationally sent energy prices skyrocketing.
In addition to the 25% rise that I’ve had to absorb over the last few months, my electricity bill will soon rise by another 50%-60% on top of what I’m currently paying, wiping out a huge chunk of my already meagre disposable income. Inflation is also biting me in the backside, with food prices having risen already in the last few months, and prices for some of my essential toiletries and other goods also shooting up. As a disabled person on a fixed income, there’s very limited room for manoeuvre, and as such I’m having to make decisions like the Starlink one in order to remain financially solvent in the months ahead.
The price of electricity is going up by a lot.
With all of that in mind, I’ve also decided to cancel my Netflix subscription. With Star Trek: Discoverybeing withdrawn from the service, and relatively few other projects that excited me coming up in the short term, it’s a significant chunk of change saved every month. Because I can’t really get out to the shops very often, and can’t lift anything heavy, I rely on Amazon for a lot of deliveries, and the cost of Amazon Prime per month is more than worth it when I stack it up next to the delivery charges I don’t have to pay, so keeping that one makes more sense. Netflix is a great service and I don’t dislike it, but something had to go, and when it came to a choice between Netflix and Amazon, Amazon won that particular fight.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, I got into a lot of financial trouble. Suffering undiagnosed mental health issues, working through a divorce, and other pressures in my life saw my spending get out-of-control, and with the abundance of cheap credit that was given out far too readily by misbehaving banks, I found myself in quite a financial pickle after a few years of mismanaged finances and a difficult period of my life. It got so bad that I had bailiffs show up several times and was even threatened with prison at one point.
I faced money problems earlier in my life.
It took a long time to crawl out of the financial hole I’d dug for myself, and even now my credit rating is still so poor that I can’t access anything but the most expensive, high-interest loans and cards. So when I say I can feel my back getting closer and closer to the wall, I really mean it. If the current rate of price rises and cost increases continues, I’m very quickly going to have nowhere left to go!
During the pandemic, the government had provided a small increase to the benefits they pay out to people like me who are disabled, as well as to jobseekers and other low-income folks. This extra money was withdrawn back in the autumn, despite a public outcry, and that’s another reason why I’m left with fewer options at the moment. The current government has proven itself to be far too inflexible, unwilling to make changes to policies even as the situation in the real world has changed (and deteriorated). Even in the autumn, when this policy was still being debated, there were many economists, politicians, and other such folks who had the foresight to see price rises and inflation pressures coming. They warned the government not to go down this road – but their voices were ignored, sadly.
The UK government (Palace of Westminster pictured) is not handling the cost of living crisis particularly well.
The way the government calculates its figures also allows them to manipulate things so they can get away with paying out less than they should. There will be a very modest rise in my income in April, but the rate of this rise was calculated months ago and thus doesn’t account for the current rate of inflation – meaning it will be more than eaten up by the aforementioned electricity bill rise and other price rises.
It’s sad to be starting 2022 with such a bleak forecast and having to scale things back, but this is the reality of our pandemic-riddled world. I fear that we’ve only seen the very beginnings of some of these problems, and that things like electricity and food prices will rise, rise, and rise again before the end of the year. There’s already talk of another significant rise in energy bills in October.
There’s already talk of more inflation and more price rises to come.
I’m not yet in a position of having to choose whether to “heat or eat,” as the current anti-slogan suggests. But because I’d already scaled back as many of my costs as possible over the years, I don’t have a lot more room to make cutbacks. I usually only heat the living room, even in the depths of winter. It’s -3°C outside as I write this early on a February morning, but I find that the one heater I have in the living room is usually adequate.
There are two remaining subscriptions that I could potentially cull, depending on how much worse the financial outlook gets. I currently subscribe to both Disney+ and Xbox Game Pass for PC – though the latter is currently paid for for the next few months thanks to a Christmas present from my sister! But in theory I could save another few pounds a month by cutting those. But once those are gone, that’s all the wiggle-room I have! Those are my only remaining non-essential bills, and as a disabled person for whom leaving the house is a challenge at the best of times, I feel that it’s important to have things like this so I can access entertainment and keep the old brain cells from decaying!
I’m sticking with Game Pass… at least for now.
I’m not in imminent danger of freezing nor of starving… but the fact that, in the UK in 2022, that statement should need to be made at all is pretty telling. I don’t like to get political here on the website at all – but I’m definitely upset with the current government and its inflexibility when it comes to solving these problems.
That’s not to say that I have all the answers, not by any stretch. But in the next few months, and certainly by the end of 2022, something’s got to change. I know I’m not the only one in this position of having to make cutbacks to be able to continue to afford the essentials, and as a disabled person who relies on certain mobility and toileting products, there’s more than just food that I have to buy every month. It isn’t possible to cut back on those things!
There are essentials – like food – that we can’t live without!
So this was a bit of an update, really. I guess you won’t see many Netflix reviews here on the website for the next few weeks and months – but I’ll continue my usual output of Star Trek content, I’ll definitely take a look at anything new from Star Wars, and I’ll keep up my regular commentary on the ins and outs of the video games industry – even if I may not be in a position to play any of the games that don’t come to Game Pass this year!
I try to avoid piracy – except in specific circumstances. If a film, TV show, or video game is available here in the UK lawfully, I’ll either pay for it or skip it. It’s only when greedy, moronic corporations refuse to broadcast their latest shows or make their films available here in the UK that I’ll sail the high seas! And as I’ve said before, I think that’s a pretty fair way to approach it.
If you’re suffering as a result of inflation or any of the other financial issues we’ve talked about today, there is help available. Here in the UK you can talk to organisations like Citizens Advice, and they definitely helped me during the period when I was struggling with debt. I can’t make any further recommendations other than to check what’s available in your local area. I hope that, if you find yourself in choppy financial waters, things settle down quickly – for all of us!
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I didn’t realise it until a few weeks ago, but I’ve officially been a Trekkie for more than thirty years. The earliest episode of The Next Generation that I can solidly remember watching was Season 2’s The Royale, which aired here in the UK in June 1991. Although I’m fairly sure that The Royale isn’t the first ever Star Trek episode that I saw, it’s the earliest one that I can remember and thus I can officially date my entry into the fandom to more than three decades ago.
I quickly became enamoured with The Next Generation, tuning in to watch every new episode as they aired, and even renting copies of some of the episodes on video as and when I could find them. In the rural part of the UK where I grew up, there weren’t many other fans of science fiction and fantasy, so being a Trekkie could be lonely. This was years before I got access to the internet, too, so finding fellow Trekkies wasn’t easy.
The Royale is the first episode of Star Trek that I can definitely remember watching.
That being said, there was a sci-fi magazine that I subscribed to for a time, and I think it must’ve been in one of the issues that I found out about a Star Trek fan group that was organising a meet-up. This would’ve been in late 1994 or early 1995, around the time Generations was in cinemas. Because my mother thought I was too young to travel more than two hours by train on my own, she accompanied me – much to my horror – but promised me she’d find other things to do in the city where the meet-up was taking place.
I was nervous as I got ready to attend the meet-up. I’d seen as much of The Next Generation as had been broadcast on terrestrial TV in the UK, and a few other episodes on video, but I’d only seen a handful of episodes of The Original Series and just one of the films (The Search for Spock, weirdly, was my first Star Trek film) so I wasn’t really sure how older fans would react. I felt like a bit of an imposter at first; a newbie barging into an established group.
It took two hours to travel by rail from where I lived to where the meet-up was being held.
But all of the Trekkies I met were incredibly welcoming. At the meet-up I was the youngest person there by a considerable margin, but everyone was very nice to me and made me feel part of the group. Nobody tried to tell me that I wasn’t a “true fan” of Star Trek because of my limited knowledge of The Original Series, and I had a great time talking to other fans for the first time, seeing different collections of merchandise – some imported from America – and hearing a few people share their experiences of meeting William Shatner or other members of the cast. I left the event having had a great time and feeling excited to continue and expand my fandom. Someone had recommended that I watch The Wrath of Khan, so shortly after I was able to rent the film and see it for myself.
I went back to several meet-ups with this group in the mid/late-1990s, but as I got ready to go to university and started getting online, I sort of drifted away. It was never an official fan club or anything as far as I recall, just a group of Trekkies who’d get together to trade merch and chat once in a while.
Kirk in The Wrath of Khan.
Those early fan meet-ups meant a lot to me as I began my journey as a Star Trek fan. The people I talked to were all very welcoming, and they seemed pleased that a younger person was interested enough in Star Trek to associate with their group. I think they recognised, even back then, that a franchise like Star Trek needs new fans – because new fans are the lifeblood of any fan community. Making sure that community is a welcoming place, however people come by it, is incredibly important.
I was quite sensitive as a kid, and if I’d been met with a wall of negativity at that first meet-up, I don’t think I’d have ever gone back. It would almost certainly have put me off Star Trek entirely, as I’d have associated the franchise with unkind, unwelcoming people. I might have never gone back to watch The Original Series, and perhaps I’d have switched off and skipped Deep Space Nine and Voyager when they came along, too. The words people use matter, and how we treat new fans or people on the cusp of joining the fan community is incredibly important.
It’s so important to be kind to everyone in the fan community – especially newbies.
Meet-ups like the ones I remember still happen within the fan community, but nowadays most people’s first contact with other Trekkies is via the internet and social media. In a way, I’m jealous of that! As a kid I would have loved nothing more than to have found a ready-made Trekkie community that I could share my love of the franchise with any time I wanted to, but I first became a Trekkie years before I got online! I grew up in a rural area, and there just weren’t any other Trekkies in my immediate circle of friends or neighbours – at least none that I knew of at the time.
But social media and the internet have brought with them trolls and unkind people who seem to delight in crapping all over anything that someone else likes. That’s unfortunately true within the Star Trek fan community as well, and there are enough people who are unkind and unpleasant to others online that I fear for anyone just getting started with Star Trek. The community that they encounter on social media is, unfortunately, plagued by a vocal minority of people like that.
The online Trekkie community can be an unkind, even hateful place.
I’m not the most active person on social media. But even I’ve seen the way that some people behave, and how the relative anonymity of the internet and social media seems to amplify some people’s absolute worst qualities and tendencies. Even conversations that start off politely, or questions asked in good faith and with no bad intentions at all, can become toxic incredibly quickly.
I believe that it’s up to all of us to be considerate and thoughtful in our interactions within the fan community. New shows like Discovery and Prodigy are hopefully going to continue to bring on board hordes of brand-new Trekkies, and all of us have a responsibility to ensure that the fan community these folks discover is a kind, welcoming place. Trying to act like gatekeepers by telling new Trekkies that their opinions are invalid because they haven’t seen a particular film or episode, or that the show they like isn’t “real Star Trek,” is going to upset people and make the Star Trek fan community look like an unkind, selfish, closed-off place.
Prodigy is hopefully going to bring lots of new fans into the Star Trek fan community for the first time.
New fans are, as I said earlier, the lifeblood of any fandom. If Star Trek were to remain the sole preserve of fans from the ’60s or the ’90s it wouldn’t last very long at all – and it wouldn’t deserve to. The fan community needs new Trekkies joining in and sharing their excitement for the franchise in order to grow and remain relevant. If we try to shut those people out or tell them they’re only “allowed” to join in once they’ve met a particular threshold then the fan community will stagnate, online fan groups will become unpleasant places, and the resultant decline in online chatter will harm Star Trek and could easily lead to a decline in viewership in general.
There are many fans for whom Star Trek has always been a complete product. There were a lot of arguments in the ’80s and ’90s about how The Next Generation was taking over from The Original Series, whether Deep Space Nine was too dark in tone, and whether the Star Trek franchise needed a prequel – to name just three examples. Star Trek has always been developing and evolving, episode by episode and season by season. But for fans who missed those conversations and didn’t see the slow progress that the franchise made over the span of decades, Star Trek has always existed as a complete product: a DVD box set or a full series on a streaming platform. It seems to me that it’s those folks who are more likely to act as gatekeepers and try to keep new fans who don’t share their opinions out of the fan community.
Star Trek hasn’t always been a complete DVD box set. It took decades to get to that point.
Star Trek has always meant different things to different people. And consequently, fans have always had preferences within the Star Trek franchise about which episodes, films, series, and even characters that they prefer. If someone doesn’t like one part of Star Trek, that’s okay. It doesn’t make them “less” of a Trekkie. And if someone’s new to the franchise and isn’t up to speed on every film or episode, that doesn’t make them “less” of a fan either.
The people who are trying to play gatekeeper need to stop. It doesn’t do anyone any good to try to exclude people – especially new fans – from the Star Trek fan community. Although I’m a fan of Star Trek in its older and newer incarnations, I understand that there are people who don’t like some or all of what Star Trek is currently doing. I was even in a similar position myself once upon a time, as I wasn’t particularly keen on Enterprise when it was announced and only tuned in sporadically during its original broadcast run. But in the early 2000s I would have never dreamed of telling anyone that they weren’t a “real fan” of Star Trek because they liked Enterprise, or because Enterprise was the first Star Trek show they’d ever seen.
I freely admit that Enterprise didn’t seem like my thing when it first premiered. But I was wrong about that.
The message I have is a simple one, at the end of the day: we all have a responsibility to keep the Star Trek fan community a kind, friendly, and welcoming place.
Fans can be passionate, and the desire to talk about the things we like – and dislike – is a powerful one. Making sure that the Star Trek fan community feels welcoming to newcomers doesn’t mean whitewashing Star Trek and never sharing a critical opinion, but it does mean that criticism needs to be carefully considered and offered in as constructive a manner as possible. ViacomCBS has definitely made mistakes with the Star Trek franchise in recent years, for example, but my criticisms of the corporation or my negative reviews of individual episodes here on the website have never strayed into attacking fellow fans. If you like an episode that I don’t, that’s okay! And I think that’s the attitude that we all need to try to adopt going forward.
A series like Prodigy has the potential to open up the Star Trek fan community, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see an influx of new, younger fans in the months and years ahead. Those of us who’ve been Trekkies for a long time should try, for their sake, to keep conversations and debates civil in tone and to ensure that the fan community is a kind, friendly, and welcoming place. Shutting down or tuning out as much of the toxicity as possible is a big part of that.
Let’s try to make sure fans of Prodigy feel welcome as they get started in the Star Trek fan community.
I’ve lost count of the number of negative, toxic, and even bigoted and hateful messages and posts that I’ve seen in recent years. Practically all of them appeared not because they were sent directly to me, nor because I sought out those groups or follow individuals who hold those views, but because they were amplified on social media by other folks – often with good intentions – who chose to interact or engage. There’s an expression from the early days of the internet that I think is relevant in a lot of cases: “don’t feed the trolls.”
A lot of the anti-Trek content spewed onto social media by people like that is done for attention, and by engaging with it in a big way it gets amplified, giving the attention-seeking trolls exactly what they want. There are some instances where calling someone out or shutting down someone espousing hurtful, bigoted views is going to be important – but in many cases there’s no need to engage with people who are throwing out hate and toxicity just for the sake of it. Because of the way social media works, with algorithms promoting content that gets the most engagements, doing so often ends up drawing more and more attention to something that really should just be ignored. Most social media platforms offer users the ability to block individuals, groups, or even whole words and phrases – so we should use those tools when necessary.
Don’t feed the trolls…
So I think that’s about all I have to say. I was prompted to write this piece after seeing a lot of chatter on social media about the state of the Star Trek fan community, and with Prodigy now airing and potentially bringing younger fans on board in large numbers, I wanted to give my two cents on why it’s important to make sure the fan community is as welcoming and friendly as possible.
Ever since I attended that first meet-up in 1994 or 1995, I’ve remembered the kindness that I was shown and how I was made to feel welcome as a new fan. I try to keep that spirit going in all of my engagements with the Star Trek fan community, and though there are episodes I dislike and things on the corporate side that I will continue to criticise, in my very limited way I try to make sure that I’m contributing positively to the overall discourse surrounding Star Trek. There’s room for constructive criticism and there’s room for differences of opinion – but there’s no room for toxicity, hate, and bigotry. It’s the responsibility of all of us to do what we can to keep the Star Trek fan community a welcoming place.
The Star Trek franchise – including all series and films mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
In the course of researching Star Trek: Prodigy for my review of the first part of Season 1, I learned something very odd. The first half of the season was itself cleaved in two, with a few episodes being broadcast, followed by a month-long break, before a second batch were broadcast leading up to the mid-season finale. This appalling scheduling – and on a streaming platform, no less – already made no sense and arguably damaged Prodigy, making it harder for the series to gain traction and retain viewers, and that’s something I addressed in my review. But one thing that’s even worse is that for Paramount+ subscribers outside of the United States – such as in Australia – the second batch of episodes weren’t broadcast at all.
When ViacomCBS announced its intention to take Discovery Season 4 away from fans, the same thing happened. Although Paramount+ existed in Latin America, Australia, and Scandinavia, those regions weren’t going to get Discovery Season 4 at the same time as the American version of Paramount+, effectively meaning that Trekkies in those regions had paid for nothing.
A rather barebones, unapologetic Twitter post from Paramount+ Australia.
We’ve talked on several occasions about ViacomCBS prioritising American Trekkies and viewers over those of us in the rest of the world, but I had hoped that the rollout of Paramount+ internationally would finally bring an end to this disgusting, outdated attitude. Although the pace of the streaming service’s rollout would make a snail covered in molasses riding a sloth up a glacier look fast by comparison, I’m still halfway hopeful that it’ll arrive here in the UK before the end of 2022 – and if I dare to dream, I’d hope that Paramount+ will be available worldwide… one day.
But even if ViacomCBS magically finds competent leadership in the months ahead, meaning Paramount+ will indeed be available here in the UK in time for, say, the debut of Strange New Worlds, it now seems as though the corporation can’t offer fans a guarantee that subscribing to Paramount+ will actually mean we’ll be able to watch any new Star Trek. So… what’s the point of Paramount+, then, and why should I bother subscribing at all?
Hey Paramount+, I fixed your slogan.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that there are some big questions that ViacomCBS and the team behind Paramount+ need to answer as soon as possible regarding the availability of upcoming Star Trek productions. But we can add into the mix the very real and very serious question of whether any non-American Paramount+ subscribers will be able to watch any new or upcoming Star Trek shows at the same time as viewers in the United States. And then we’ll have to decide for ourselves whether we can trust the answer given the corporation’s poor track record going back several years at least.
Last year, when Paramount+ debuted in the United States and began its painfully slow international rollout, I was optimistic and even dare I say looking forward to the streaming platform’s arrival here in the UK. Being able to subscribe to Star Trek’s home, its native platform, felt like a good opportunity, and as I’ve said on several occasions: I want to offer ViacomCBS and the Star Trek franchise my support and financial backing in whatever way I can.
ViacomCBS is the corporation in charge of Paramount+.
But now, having seen just how poorly ViacomCBS has been treating Paramount+ subscribers outside of the United States, the idea of signing up for Paramount+ when it eventually arrives in the UK is getting harder and harder to justify. That’s before we get into the technical issues that plague the platform: in just the last couple of weeks there was an episode of Prodigy that wasn’t available, error messages about servers being “too busy” that seem to be trying to force subscribers to pay for even more expensive packages, and myriad other glitches and screw-ups that leave Paramount+ in the United States feeling like a poor quality product.
Given that viewers in the United States are ViacomCBS’ priority – which they clearly and demonstrably have been thus far – that hardly leaves me feeling optimistic about the kind of service I can expect if and when Paramount+ makes its way across the Atlantic. If Paramount+ were to repeat the Prodigy mistake or their initial Discovery Season 4 plans with Strange New Worlds, for example, then why should I – or any other Trekkie, come to that – bother to sign up? It brings us right back to the arguments about piracy: if ViacomCBS offers fans no lawful way to access their new shows, then piracy becomes the default option.
Will Trekkies in the rest of the world get to enjoy Strange New Worlds along with our American friends… or at all?
Paramount+ does not exist in a vacuum. The choice fans are presented with is not “pay for Paramount+ or don’t watch anything.” Piracy exists, and with a minimal amount of effort it’s possible for anyone with a phone, tablet, or computer to watch or download every new episode of Star Trek. To compete against that successfully, Paramount+ has to do what Netflix, Disney+, and others have done: the platform has to be a compelling, inexpensive alternative.
That means it needs to work, first and foremost. If fans log in and try to watch the latest episode but find that it won’t play or, as happened with Prodigy Season 1, Episode 9, it just isn’t there at all, then the entire argument behind paying to subscribe falls down. And if fans in the rest of the world can’t access something that fans in America can, how on earth does ViacomCBS expect to convince anyone that a Paramount+ subscription is a worthwhile investment?
Actual photo of the Paramount+ server.
We’re facing inflation and a significant rise in the cost of living. Speaking for myself, as someone on a fixed income, I’m already considering that it may not be possible to keep all of my current subscriptions, let alone add a new one into the mix. In order to overcome that, or to make sure folks are willing to consider Paramount+ a must-have subscription that they can’t live without, ViacomCBS has to demonstrate that the service is a solid investment. That means basic competence to begin with – fixing technical issues, ensuring that the service works properly, and that it has an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. But from the point of view of someone outside of the United States, it means ViacomCBS and Paramount+ need a major attitude adjustment. The corporation and its streaming platform need to demonstrate to Trekkies – and to viewers of all of their other programmes – that they aren’t just fixated on America; that those of us in the rest of the world matter to them too. If they can’t, I see no reason whatsoever why we should offer them our money.
This is an own goal; a self-inflicted wound from Paramount+ that the streaming service absolutely does not need to make. Take a look at the competition: Disney+ doesn’t gate off shows like The Mandalorian or films like Encanto – once they’re on Disney+ they’re on Disney+ for everyone, and while Disney+ has had its own international rollout issues, the service is streets ahead of Paramount+. Paramount+ has existed in its current form for almost a year – and going back to CBS All Access, for almost five years. There has been time for ViacomCBS to learn how to act and how to get this right – but they have consistently failed to do so.
Disney+ doesn’t gatekeep like this – and neither should Paramount+ if it wants to compete.
There’s no question in my mind that ViacomCBS is mismanaging Paramount+ in a serious, potentially fatal way. For a second-tier platform like this to survive the “streaming wars” it has to make an offer that viewers simply can’t refuse. It has to compete not only against the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, but also against the option of piracy, and it has to convince folks like me that I’ll actually get a decent service if I part with my money. So far, I don’t see Paramount+ as a compelling investment as someone living outside of the United States. And even if I were in America, given the other issues and faults with Paramount+ the best I can say is that it might be a service I pay for one month out of twelve to binge-watch a few shows before cancelling.
In short, bringing Paramount+ to the UK – and to countries and territories around the world – will only matter if the service brings with it all of the new and upcoming shows that American viewers can look forward to. If it doesn’t, or if those shows are going to be delayed by many months, then fans are pretty quickly going to see Paramount+ as a bad offer. If the corporation allows that mindset to take hold, it will be very difficult to change the narrative later on, so they need to get this right from day one. Paramount+ needs to bolt out of the gate with a strong, good value offer that can compete with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. That means the current “America First” attitude of the ViacomCBS board has got to go.
Paramount+ is owned and operated by ViacomCBS and is available in the United States, Scandinavia, Latin America, and Australia. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
This article deals with the subjects of the Holocaust and racism and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
It goes without saying that the Holocaust is an incredibly sensitive and delicate subject. Even titling this article Whoopi’s “whoopsie” might be enough to seem flippant or even offensive to some folks – but I just couldn’t resist the pun. If you haven’t heard about this controversy, I’ll briefly recap what happened before we get into some analysis and a consideration of what – if anything – it could mean for Star Trek: Picard Season 2.
Whoopi Goldberg, who plays the role of Guinan in the Star Trek franchise, is the co-host of The View, an American daytime television talk show. She’s known in that context for being bold and outspoken, particularly on issues of race in the United States. On a recent episode of The View, Goldberg made controversial remarks about the Holocaust, claiming that the event “isn’t about race” because it concerned “two white groups of people.” I encourage you to view the full exchange in context (you can find it on YouTube) but suffice to say that controversy soon ensued – and the condemnation of Goldberg’s comments even reached mainstream news outlets on this side of the Atlantic.
Whoopi Goldberg on a recent episode of The View.
Goldberg has offered her apology for the remarks she made, and it’s worth pointing that out before we go any further. She apologised for “the hurt [she] caused” and reiterated her support for Jewish people and Jewish communities around the world. It’s not for me to decide whether her apology is up to code, and again I encourage you to read it in full. I felt it important to point out that she has issued an apology before proceeding any further.
The Holocaust is such a unique event in the history of our world that it almost beggars belief that a 66-year-old woman, who otherwise seems to be well-informed and whose job it is to discuss current events, could be so profoundly ignorant or misinformed about what it is. Holocaust education, at least here in the UK, has been a big part of the history curriculum in schools for at least fifty years – if not longer – and there are many institutions around the world dedicated to preserving the memory of Holocaust victims and promoting education about the Holocaust. Less than a week ago, on the 27th of January, we marked Holocaust Memorial Day, a worldwide event held on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
A photograph of the iconic entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp.
On a school trip to Germany almost thirty years ago I visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp and saw firsthand the kind of facilities that the Nazis used to keep political prisoners, Romani, Jews, and everyone else that they deemed “sub-human” or “undesirable.” Seeing the camp is something that has stuck with me for decades, and the sombre lessons that my class had about the Holocaust and the extermination of Jews are likewise seared in my memory.
British-made documentary series The World At War has one of the best educational pieces about the Holocaust that I’ve ever seen in its episode Genocide, and if you can find a copy I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a harrowing watch, but for anyone who wants to learn more about this defining moment in history, and the events that led to it, The World At War presents the history of the Holocaust about as well as possible, and includes interviews with survivors.
Title card for The World At War episode Genocide; recommended viewing for anyone wishing to learn more about the Holocaust.
Outside of conversations and discussions about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust itself, it’s almost never a good idea to bring up the Holocaust. Politicians, commentators, directors, and even journalists have all found themselves in trouble for saying something stupid or ill-informed, or for using the Holocaust as an unfair comparison to something else happening in the world. And when making unprepared, unscripted remarks – as Whoopi Goldberg appears to have been – misspeaking is all the easier.
I can’t defend what Whoopi Goldberg said. It was so ignorant and stupid that she deserves all of the backlash she receives. It’s also indicative, at least to me as a non-American, of America’s continuing obsession with black-and-white race issues that completely ignore every other marginalised group. Almost sixty years after Martin Luther King dreamed of a country where everyone would be judged by the “content of their character,” America seems more race-obsessed than ever – and that obsession with black-versus-white racism comes at the cost of marginalising or completely ignoring practically every other group.
Whoopi Goldberg with Stephen Colbert.
Part of Whoopi Goldberg’s defence of her original remarks, made during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, drew on her own understanding of race and racism as an African-American, and appear to me to reinforce the idea that too many Americans have a strange, warped misunderstanding of what race even is – as well as who can and can’t be racist and how racism itself works. To me, that’s indicative of a fundamental failure of the American education system and of the way racial issues in America are discussed and debated.
So that’s my read on what happened. Given the outrage that Whoopi Goldberg’s comments understandably generated, I wanted to step back and consider what impact, if any, the controversy now engulfing her may have on Star Trek: Picard Season 2, which is scheduled to premiere in just over four weeks from today. Goldberg is set to reprise her role of Guinan, bringing the character back to our screens for the first time since 1994’s Star Trek: Generations, and she was recently featured in a big way in the latest trailer.
Admiral Picard with Guinan in the Picard Season 2 trailer.
At time of writing, no one involved with Star Trek: Picard Season 2 has made a public statement on the Whoopi Goldberg controversy, but I don’t see how that can be sustainable, especially when the cast and crew get on the publicity circuit and start giving interviews in the run-up to the season premiere. Whoopi Goldberg, having just made her first big appearance in the new season’s marketing, may have been slated to make appearances or give interviews about the show – but I’m not sure whether that will happen at all now, or whether her role may be scaled back.
Sometimes they say that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” but take it from someone who used to work in marketing: this is about as bad as it gets in terms of publicity! The last thing anyone involved in Star Trek: Picard needs is for Whoopi Goldberg’s comments to overshadow the show’s return, so in my opinion the producers and actors need to get together and put out a statement relatively quickly, and certainly before they get out on the publicity circuit. That way they’ll be able to refer to their statement when the inevitable questions are asked.
A publicity event in the run-up to Picard Season 1 in 2020.
I’ve heard from several people who say that they’re either not going to watch Picard Season 2, or that they’re far less enthusiastic about supporting the upcoming season in light of Whoopi Goldberg’s comments. There’s a danger for ViacomCBS that this will snowball if they don’t handle it well, perhaps leading to an unofficial boycott or significantly fewer viewers tuning in, so the corporation and its marketing team really need to get out in front of this as quickly as possible.
There’s a theory from the world of literary criticism that I think is worth discussing: “death of the author.” Originally proposed in 1967 by French critic Roland Barthes, death of the author basically argues that we should consider a work of literature on its own merits, separating the writing from the writer. Death of the author has since been applied to other forms of media, including television and film, and in this context we’re looking at whether it might be possible to separate the performance from the actor – to enjoy Guinan without celebrating Whoopi Goldberg.
Guinan and Admiral Picard embracing in the Picard Season 2 trailer.
The two sides to this never-ending discussion are as follows: either it’s possible and desirable to separate the art from the artist, considering the merits of a piece without any consideration for who the author or artist was, or it isn’t possible or desirable to do so, and that the context of who the creator was matters in a fundamental way to the work in question. With actors this is, perhaps, more readily apparent because we can see and hear them; it’s far more difficult to put an actor out of our mind while watching and listening to them in real-time.
My take on death of the author varies somewhat. If an artist, author, or performer is long-dead, it’s much easier in my view to analyse their work, and even enjoy their work, without paying too much attention to who they were. The performance has outlived the performer, so to speak. But when dealing with living people, I find this far more difficult to do. I understand Barthes’ arguments about objectivity and judging a work on its own merits, but when people hold outspoken or particularly harmful points of view, I find it much more difficult to set that aside for the sake of art or entertainment.
Signature of Roland Barthes, who first espoused the theory known as “death of the author.” Image Credit: Wandrg, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
J.K. Rowling is perhaps the best example of this, in my opinion. Her blatantly transphobic statements and support for “gender critical” groups and causes has made it significantly harder for me to enjoy the Harry Potter series for which she’s best-known. I find it difficult to separate Harry Potter, either in book or film form, from J.K. Rowling in light of her offensive statements and the positions that she’s known to hold.
So when I hear Trekkies say that they can no longer support Star Trek: Picard in light of Whoopi Goldberg’s comments, I fully understand. I can empathise with that position because it’s very similar to how I see the Harry Potter series, and I wouldn’t want to tell anyone that they should feel differently. It can be difficult to set aside the artist and just focus on the art, especially when dealing with an actor who we have to see and listen to.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.
I would say, though, that Whoopi Goldberg is nowhere near as important to Star Trek: Picard as someone like J.K. Rowling is to Harry Potter. She may only appear in one or two episodes, and as recently as last month it wasn’t even certain that she’d be appearing at all; her appearance in the trailer confirmed it. Had remarks like these been made by someone like Sir Patrick Stewart or one of the show’s senior producers, Star Trek: Picard would be in a lot more trouble. In my view, it’s probable that the show will be able to weather this storm, even if it loses some viewers in the process.
Whoopi Goldberg has offered an apology, and in the coming days I would expect to hear something from the Picard Season 2 cast and crew, disavowing her comments and perhaps dropping her from the publicity circuit or reducing her importance to the show’s marketing campaign. That will most likely allow Picard Season 2 to get through the next few weeks in the run-up to the show’s broadcast.
Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan in the Picard Season 2 trailer.
In a way, this couldn’t have come at a worse time. With the new season premiering in just over four weeks from now, this is the moment for the marketing campaign to truly gear up and start promoting the show’s return. It’s been two years since Picard Season 1 went off the air, so for casual viewers and for fans who aren’t keeping up-to-date with the ins and outs of Star Trek, simply getting the message out about Picard’s return has to be top priority. There’s no doubt in my mind that this controversy will be a distraction, one that the show absolutely does not need.
But I don’t believe it will be a fatal distraction, at least not as things stand. Whoopi Goldberg isn’t likely to be cut or edited out of Picard Season 2, and even seems likely to retain her job on The View, despite her remarks. There’s enough time over the next month for the marketing team to move past this controversy, which, like so many others, will have a relatively short shelf-life on social media before fading away.
I’m disappointed with Whoopi Goldberg. Her character of Guinan is so calm, ethereal, and wise that it can be jarring, as a Trekkie, to see Whoopi Goldberg talking up a storm on The View at the best of times, and this controversy is an even more extreme example. However, I note that she has at least made an attempt to apologise – and seems to be sincere. And on the positive side, her initial ignorance of the Holocaust may have shone a light on a far broader lack of understanding and proper education about the event in the United States, potentially exposing more people to the reality of what happened, thereby preventing this kind of blinkered, ignorant point of view from being espoused in future. Better education and a better understanding of the Holocaust are badly needed, it seems, and Whoopi Goldberg may have inadvertently aided that cause.
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 will premiere on the 3rd of March 2022 on Paramount+ in the United States, and on the 4th of March on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom and around the world. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Season 1.
After a short pandemic-enforced break, Star Trek: Picard Season 3 resumed filming a few days ago. Production on the show’s third season has been underway for a while, and was officially announced back in September during the franchise’s Star Trek Day digital event. The interesting thing about Picard Season 3 being so far along in its production is, of course, that Season 2 has yet to be broadcast. This got me thinking about some of the benefits and potential pitfalls of filming back-to-back in this fashion, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
There are some great examples of productions that were filmed back-to-back. The Lord of the Rings trilogy of films has to be one of the best examples of this: all three films were shot together in New Zealand, though post-production work and editing continued after the first and second films had premiered. The Lord of the Rings is held in very high esteem even twenty years after it premiered, and is rightly credited with bringing the high fantasy genre to mainstream audiences, paving the way for titles like Game of Thrones.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was hugely successful in the high fantasy genre.
Being shot back-to-back worked well for The Lord of the Rings then, clearly! The Return of the King – the third and final part of the trilogy – swept the board at the Academy Awards in 2004, picking up a record-equalling eleven Oscars.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings, the practicalities of production meant that shooting all three films together made sense. New Line Cinema had greenlit the entire trilogy and was expecting it to be a success, and the difficulties of setting up production in New Zealand – as well as having the actors travel there – all came together to make filming the entire project at once a practical and sensible approach to production. From the earliest days of pre-production, New Line Cinema intended to do things this way.
Whether in cinema or on television, there are advantages to filming back-to-back. There’s far less of a chance that characters will look noticeably different from one part of the story to the next, for example, as everything from costuming to makeup and even haircuts or simply ageing will not be factors that impact production. Keeping the same behind-the-camera crew will also allow for a consistent production that keeps the same cinematographic style. It makes it easier to go back and re-work parts of the story, if necessary – for example, if a writer or director felt the need to add a scene foreshadowing the ending, or even to change the entire end of the story to better fit what had come before.
There are advantages to back-to-back production.
But there can be drawbacks to this approach, pitfalls that can be very difficult to avoid even with good preparation and the best of intentions. And there’s one reason in particular why Star Trek: Picard kicked off this discussion for me.
Star Trek: Picard started with an episode that’s probably the best series premiere in the history of the franchise, surpassing even Deep Space Nine’s Emissary – the previous high-water mark. Over the course of the next few episodes, its story unfolded slowly and seemed to be building up to an exciting climax. Unfortunately, though, the season stumbled as it approached the finish line, with the first half of its two-part finale in particular being a real disappointment. The way the season eventually ended left several storylines unresolved and at least one gaping plot hole. To be blunt, the finale was weak – and it’s important that the writers and producers receive that feedback and take it on board.
I’m not the only person to have criticised the way that Star Trek: Picard Season 1 ended; the two parts of the season finale are the worst-rated episodes of the show according to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
The Season 1 finale of Star Trek: Picard was by far the weakest part of the story.
So what’s the point of bringing this up? Well, it’s simple: filming back-to-back, as is now happening with Seasons 2 and 3 of Picard, means that the show’s writers and producers will have far less of a margin for error; they’re much more constrained and less able to make changes based on critiques and audience reactions.
Set aside any thoughts you might have about “artistic integrity” or the “vision” of a production’s writers, producers, and directors. In the real world, with very few exceptions films and television shows are adapted – and in some cases changed entirely – based on the way audiences respond to them. This is why practically every film and television series is shown to test audiences before they premiere. Doing so can give production companies the chance to make last-minute adjustments, make cuts, or even rework entire sequences.
ViacomCBS will not have ignored the reviews and discussion surrounding Picard Season 1 and its finale. Those criticisms will have been absorbed by the corporation, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they mandated changes to the story of Season 2 as a result, even if such changes may be relatively minor. Just to pick on one example, the story of main character Narek, which was dropped without a resolution part-way through the finale, might be something that the team in charge of the show insist that Season 2 clarifies.
Narek’s story was just one of several major elements that the season finale failed to pay off.
But if there are issues with Season 2 – whether they’re to do with story, art style, visual effects, etc. – it will be much harder, and much more expensive, to make any changes to Season 3. In all likelihood, Season 3 will wrap up its main phase of production before Season 2 even premieres, and while post-production work and pick-up shoots offer some opportunities to make changes, those opportunities are limited. If a film or series has been ready to go for a year or more, going back to film extra scenes can be tricky; it can be very easy to tell which scenes and shots were filmed and added in later, even in productions with high budgets.
In short, because Picard Season 1 had some very particular and noteworthy issues with its finale, I’m at least a little concerned about the direction of the series heading into Seasons 2 and 3, and the fact that the seasons are being shot back-to-back heightens that. Had Season 1 ended with a stronger finale, perhaps I’d be less concerned. But unfortunately it didn’t – and that leaves the show in a strange place for me. I’m genuinely excited to spend more time with Admiral Picard and the crew of La Sirena, but I’m at least a little anxious about the way the show’s production is being handled.
Where will the admiral and his crew go next?
In a way, this is something we may have to get used to as the pandemic rumbles on. Had it not been for covid and its associated lockdowns in California, it would’ve been possible for production on Picard Season 2 to get underway far sooner, potentially meaning that there’d have been no need to film the second and third seasons back-to-back. But the pandemic continues to be a disruptive force across the world, so productions may have to get used to working when they can and taking breaks when they must – at least in the short-to-medium term.
In some cases it won’t matter. In others, filming back-to-back can provide significant advantages. But there are potential drawbacks to this way of approaching a major production, not least the difficulty in going back and making changes based on audience and critical feedback. It’s the latter point that concerns me when it comes to Star Trek: Picard, and that’s due to the weak ending to an otherwise excellent first season. Perhaps in the days ahead we should go back to the two parts of Et in Arcadia Ego and re-examine what went wrong – as well as looking at what the season finale got right. If I forget, remind me! For now, you can check out the reviews of both episodes on my dedicated Star Trek: Picard page.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the copyright of New Line Cinema and/or Warner Bros. The Star Trek franchise – including Star Trek: Picard – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
For the first time in a long time – possibly for the first time ever – the UK has a government willing to consider something that had previously been unthinkable: abolishing the hated and outdated television license. Their reasons for bringing up the issue at this precise moment may be questionable, but the policy itself is not. Since the turn of the millennium at least, support for abolishing this hated, regressive tax has only grown, and it’s now one of the most consistently popular policy positions in the entire country.
I’m not a political ideologue. I’m not wedded to one political party nor to a specific ideology, and I’ve voted for practically all of the UK’s major political parties at one time or another over the years. Though I seldom find myself on the same side of the argument as the likes of Nadine Dorries (the current Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, within whose brief the BBC and the license fee fall) I’m happy to see that, finally, a British government is bold enough to swing the proverbial axe and finally bring an end to this utterly outdated method of funding a television broadcaster.
Official portrait of Nadine Dorries, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
But the government is going about this in quite literally the worst way possible, putting forward their least convincing and most polarising argument. This is a cause for concern, because if the ineptitude of people like Nadine Dorries creates an increase in support for the BBC and the television license, the best chance we’ve ever had to abolish the damn thing will be lost. The government, through nothing short of abject stupidity, will have blown the country’s best chance to bring an end to an expensive anachronism, one which isn’t fit for purpose any more. And that would be a travesty.
Before we go any further, a quick reminder on what the television license actually is and how it works. Anyone who watches television in the UK – including some live broadcasts streamed online – is required by law to purchase a television license. The money collected by this tax – and it is a tax, no matter what some may claim – funds the British Broadcasting Corporation, more commonly known as the BBC. The BBC uses this money to pay its way, producing television programmes like Strictly Come Dancing, Doctor Who, Match of the Day, and many more. Failure to pay the television license, even on legitimate grounds, leads to harassment from the BBC’s scarily-named “enforcement division,” who try to act like bailiffs and will even show up at your house to harass you in person. Even if someone never watches any BBC programmes – which, in the days of 500+ satellite and cable television channels is increasingly likely – they’re still forced to pay the tax.
An example of a threatening letter from the TV Licensing organisation.
The television license is, unlike income tax, a regressive tax. Because the fee is the same for everyone, regardless of income or ability to pay, it impacts poor people and those on low or fixed incomes hardest, and while it isn’t the only tax in the UK that behaves this way, it’s by far the most egregious. At the current rate of £159 per year – $217 USD at time of writing – it’s borderline unaffordable for low-income households, especially with a growing cost of living crisis sending food prices, energy bills, and the cost of practically everything else skyrocketing.
This isn’t the first time I’ve brought up the television license here on the website. Almost two years ago I first laid out my argument against this regressive tax, and before we press ahead I think we should recap why I feel the TV tax needs to be scrapped. Firstly, and most importantly, the television license is simply out-of-date. There may have been a justification for this method of funding in the 1960s, but no such justification exists in the 2020s. The world of entertainment has simply moved on, with not only a veritable smorgasbord of television channels to choose from – over 100 of which are free-to-air for anyone with a television set – but also a growing number of subscription services like Netflix and Disney+, with others such as Paramount+ coming soon as well. Not to mention the internet itself and platforms like YouTube. The idea of insisting that every household pay a tax to fund one single television broadcaster is just plain outdated, especially considering that fewer and fewer people watch or engage with the BBC at all. Those days have come and gone.
There hasn’t been a justification for the television license since TVs looked like this.
Next, we have the nature of the tax itself. As mentioned, this is a regressive tax, one which hits poor and low-income folks hardest. As someone on a fixed income myself, I can attest to this. £159 may not sound like much to some people, but for many folks, that could be several months’ worth of disposable income. As inflation rises and prices for everything creep up, the license fee becomes increasingly unaffordable, especially as it’s pegged to rise in line with the government’s official measure of inflation.
Finally, let’s consider what the tax actually pays for: entertainment. The BBC runs a news operation too, and pays a lot of money to bureaucrats and managers in an inefficient fashion, but the bulk of the money raised goes on programmes like Strictly Come Dancing, Line of Duty, EastEnders, Doctor Who, Top Gear, Match of the Day… and the list goes on. What do all of these programmes have in common? They’re commercially viable – meaning that they could be produced by any other commercial broadcaster.
Taxpayers’ money is being used to produce soap operas, reality television, and many other mediocre entertainment products.
Take The Great British Bake Off as a case in point. The BBC used to pay for the show, but when they were outbid by Channel 4, the series retained its popularity and its audience on a different channel. It is simply not acceptable in 2022 that tax money, raised from millions of people who can’t afford to pay the inflated rates, is being used to fund mediocre entertainment programmes that can easily be made by other commercial channels and broadcasters.
This is the winning argument. When it’s explained to people in this way – that the television tax is inflated, unfair, and regressive – abolishing it is not just popular, it’s the only argument that makes any sense, and there really can’t be any counter-argument that isn’t just obfuscation or that tries to shift the goalposts. By sticking to arguments about the inherent unfairness of the tax and the fact that it’s utterly outdated in a modern media landscape, the government – and campaigners like me – will win.
Logo of the TV Licensing organisation.
But this isn’t the way that the current government is trying to go. By talking about “bias” within the BBC they come across as whining – and worse, they come across as trying to punish the organisation for not giving them kinder, more fawning coverage. It’s Trumpian in the extreme, with echoes of Trump’s famous “fake news” attack, which he levied at any journalist or broadcaster who dared question him or call him out.
By using the “bias” argument, the government is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, further polarise the political discourse in the UK, and fail in its stated goal of reforming the way in which the BBC is funded. The current government is sufficiently unpopular right now that any organisation that they criticise is going to receive a boost in support and popularity. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” – so goes the old adage, and so it will prove to be for many people in this country who would, all else being equal, remain opposed to the television license. But when they see the BBC under attack by an aggressive government, particularly as they seem to be launching this attack at this time to distract from other scandals, they’re far more inclined to support the BBC, and by extension the television license.
There’s a very real sense that the current government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson is using the TV tax issue to dodge or distract from scandals and other problems.
Abolishing the television license does not mean abolishing the BBC. The BBC has enough time between now and the end of its current charter in 2027 to find and implement a new funding method. Many folks have suggested a subscription model, with the BBC adopting an approach similar to the likes of Sky or Virgin Media. Others have suggested that the BBC could simply do what every other television channel does and run advertisements. It could even go online, offering a platform comparable to the likes of Netflix. In short, there are options for the BBC to continue to exist and continue to produce its content.
Popular brands and shows could also be auctioned off, and as programmes like The Great British Bake Off have already demonstrated, there are many broadcasters who’d happily snap up the most popular ones. They’d remain viable on other networks – and many would probably do even better on commercial channels or online.
The Great British Bake Off was bought by rival broadcaster Channel 4 a few years ago.
But again, the government’s ham-fisted, idiotic approach to this issue is going to wreck it. If they genuinely want to abolish the television license, they’re already messing it up by putting their worst argument front-and-centre. Claims of “bias” may resonate with some right-wingers, but that’s offputting to practically everyone else in the country. Instead of making this a unifying issue, one which could actually score the government some much-needed kudos, they’re instead managing to drive up support for the BBC and its outdated method of funding, and turning what should be an easy win into a disappointing defeat.
I firmly believe that the abolition of the TV license is only a matter of time. But it would be such a shame if the current government squanders this opportunity through sheer force of incompetence, allowing the vestigial tax to remain in place for years or even a decade longer than necessary. By deliberately turning the TV license into a political issue, Nadine Dorries and her ilk have polarised the debate, lost potential friends and allies, and weakened their own hand. Abolishing the TV license should be a progressive issue – it’s a regressive tax that disproportionately impacts low-income households. But by making it such a polarising political issue in a political climate that is already so deeply divided, the current government is actively pushing away people who should be natural allies in this fight.
My message to them is simple: focus on a winning, unifying argument, and stop whining about “bias.”
In the UK, it is required by law (at time of writing) to purchase a television license in order to watch live TV. This article should not be interpreted as encouraging anyone to fail to purchase a license if a license is required. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 3-4, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, and Star Trek: Voyager.
Now that 2021 has come and gone, I thought it would be interesting to look back on the progress the website made over the course of the year. Thanks to my web host and other analytics I have a fair amount of data to measure the website’s performance.
A big caveat: this is just for fun! Running Trekking with Dennis is my hobby, not a serious job, and I don’t write here because I’m desperately chasing huge numbers of readers or “internet points!” I enjoy having a space of my own where I can share my thoughts and review some of the films and TV shows that I’m interested in – and I’d still be here even if no one showed up to read any of it!
It’s time to look at some stats and numbers for 2021.
If 2020 had been a year of slow and steady growth, 2021 was a wild rollercoaster! A couple of articles went “viral” – or at least as close to going viral as I’m ever likely to get – and those two posts accounted for significant spikes in views in June and again in December. Other articles generally did well, and I saw decent views for most of my Star Trek episode reviews, which was great, but those two pieces in particular seemed to get a lot of attention.
Overall, more than 61,000 people visited the website in 2021 – up from 14,000 in 2020. That’s a year-on-year increase of more than 300% – meaning the website more than quadrupled the number of hits this year. That’s astonishing, and the fact that so many people showed up to read articles that I’d written is actually quite a humbling feeling.
The number of visitors to Trekking with Dennis in 2021 could fill London’s O2 Arena more than three times over!
Visitors came from all corners of the globe, too. Trekking with Dennis picked up readers from the heart of Africa, every nation in South America, India, Russia, and even China! I guess I’m allowed through the Great Firewall (at least for now)! Every country in Europe was represented in the stats, including smaller countries like the Faroe Islands. Hi, Faroese readers!
Of course, the majority of views came from the Anglosphere, with the United States being the number one country. The UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa were all well-represented, too. Considering the website is in English and deals with a lot of American-made films, games, and television programmes, I’d expect to see most of the views coming from those regions.
Hello, Faroe Islands!
In early November, the website’s name changed – and so did the URL. This change was disruptive, but far less so than I had initially thought. Though the number of hits definitely dropped following the change in URL, things actually got back to normal pretty quickly, and in December I saw the second of those “viral” posts I mentioned – something I definitely wasn’t expecting!
Across 2021 I wrote 263 articles – slightly more than in 2020. And those articles contained a combined 649,000 words! To give you an idea of how much that is: it’s the equivalent of approximately eight “average-length” novels, 100,000 more words than Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, or roughly the same number of words as Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. That’s a lot of words!
So let’s take a look at the top ten most-read articles in 2021. These are the ten pieces that I wrote in 2021 that scored the most hits.
This was the third part in an unofficial series that I ran in the early part of the year, looking ahead to several upcoming seasons of Star Trek. In this article I looked ahead to Strange New Worlds and made a few predictions – guesses, really – about elements the show might include. As luck would have it, later that same day came the announcements of five new members of the main cast! That was some strange timing, especially considering that this was the first piece I’d written about Strange New Worlds in more than six months at that point.
One of my predictions has already borne out: I said in this piece that I was sure there’d be a redesign of the uniforms, and the teases we saw at Star Trek Day proved me right! With the show still a few months away, though, we’ll have to wait to see if I was right about anything else!
Significant line: “I’m really looking forward to Strange New Worlds. It seems to be offering more of a “classic” take on Star Trek when compared to recent projects, and I’m 100% there for that!”
I don’t talk about Marvel a lot here on the website. Comic books and their cinematic adaptations aren’t usually my first choice, and while I’ve enjoyed some Marvel films as popcorn entertainment, I just don’t have the nostalgia or connection to the world of comics that many folks have. Regardless, on this occasion in June I talked about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its growing complexity – and asked whether a potential reboot or reset might be coming any time soon.
Keeping up with all of the goings-on in the MCU can feel like a full-time job sometimes! And because of Marvel’s love of crossovers, the shared fictional universe that its films and TV shows inhabit can feel intimidating or even offputting to the newbie or casual viewer. As the MCU has moved away from being “the real world plus superheroes” into a connected, shared setting with its own lore and almost fifteen years’ worth of history, it’s become dense and complex. Not every MCU title is inaccessible as a result – but some are getting to that point. Just like the worlds of comic books have been reset (such as in DC’s famous Crisis on Infinite Earths series), I feel it’s inevitable that Disney and Marvel will eventually do the same, rebooting the MCU for a new generation of audiences.
Significant line:“The legacy of characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk could pass to new iterations of those characters with new actors taking on lead roles in stories inspired by earlier films, but remaining distinct from them. New backstories could be created, perhaps based on different versions of the superheroes from other editions of their comic books.”
Back in February I took some time off from sci-fi and fantasy to highlight one of my favourite YouTube channels from the past few years. Cruising the Cut is part-travelogue, part-documentary, part-lifestyle vlog, and follows the journey of a man who lives aboard a canal narrowboat here in the UK. When I first started watching, Cruising the Cut only had a few thousand followers, but the channel has recently passed the 200,000 mark – a milestone that is thoroughly deserved.
I’ve always had a fascination with the canal network – a series of artificial waterways made in the early years of the industrial revolution. Cruising the Cut often has fun and interesting canal facts, but it’s also the kind of slow, gentle viewing that I think we all need sometimes. High-octane action and tense drama is great – but sometimes taking a break from that and slowing down is just what the doctor ordered!
Significant line:“Canal narrowboats only have a maximum cruising speed of around four miles-per-hour, so don’t expect Cruising the Cut to be zipping all across the country in each video.”
“Death by a thousand cuts” was the somewhat dramatic title that I gave to my review of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in June. I felt it encapsulated my feelings about the so-called “remaster”: that there wasn’t one single overwhelming fault, but a plethora of little ones that built up and contributed to a sense that it was far less than it could have been.
I adore the Mass Effect games, and I went into Legendary Edition hoping to get a good version of the original trilogy. But unfortunately, BioWare and EA took the path of least resistance, putting together a pretty crap “remaster” that I felt was not worth the asking price. There were bugs that had been present in the original versions of all three games that hadn’t been fixed – and I couldn’t excuse such extreme laziness and such a lack of care. I recently crowned Legendary Edition my worst game of 2021.
Significant line: “Legendary Edition represents a phenomenal missed opportunity to take these games and do more with them.”
I have to admit I was surprised by the response to this one! In the late ’90s, some fans argued very strongly that the USS Voyager had used “too many” torpedoes and shuttlecraft over the course of its journey through the Delta Quadrant, and the argument did the rounds in some parts of the Trekkie community for a while. Though I hadn’t really seen many people discussing it in recent years, the argument always bugged me – so I finally wrote out my response.
In short, I argued that a combination of resource gathering, trading, and building replacements was more than acceptable as a counter-argument, and in particular the fact that the crew were resourceful enough to build not one but two Delta Flyers was proof of this. Obviously “it’s just a story,” and the number of torpedoes fired or shuttlecraft used was at the whim of the writers. But from an in-universe point of view, I don’t see why it has to be considered a big deal. It seems at least some people are still interested in this argument after all!
Significant line:“It stands to reason that, contained within Voyager’s databanks, are the designs and schematics for both torpedoes and shuttles.”
All the way back in January, shortly after Discovery’s third season finale, I wrote this relatively short piece looking at Tilly. This focused on the short epilogue at the end of That Hope Is You, Part 2, specifically the scene in which Captain Burnham arrived on the bridge to assume command for the first time. Amongst the assembled officers and crew was Tilly, but for some reason her uniform colour had been digitally changed – and pretty badly, too!
Tilly was originally supposed to be wearing the red colour of the command division, but seemingly at the last moment her command red had been changed to science blue via some pretty awful digital effects. She was only on screen for a few seconds, but this was pretty noticeable on a re-watch. Now that we know Tilly’s destination in Season 4, I wonder if the original plan at the end of Season 3 had seen her character go in a different direction? Maybe the original intention was for Tilly to remain on the command track, or perhaps even to serve as Burnham’s XO? We may never know!
Significant line:“It’s possible that this literally was a last-second change; the low quality of the texture used for the blue stripe may mean it was something thrown together in a matter of days…”
I wrote this list-article shortly after Star Trek’s “First Contact Day” digital event. Sonequa Martin-Green had introduced the first trailer for Discovery’s fourth season, and it was in this trailer that we first got wind of the “gravitational anomaly” – unnamed at the time. I put together a handful of theories based on what we’d seen and heard in the trailer, and even as we’ve hit the halfway point of the season, at least a couple of those remain plausible!
This was the first opportunity I’d had to talk about Discovery Season 4 outside of pure speculation, and the trailer had dropped some hints as to the anomaly that we now know as the DMA. I had fun putting the list together, and going back to past iterations of Star Trek for inspiration – and it seems a lot of people found it interesting, too. This article did well throughout the year, but really saw an uptick in hits around the time Season 4 premiered, and has continued to perform well as the season has progressed.
Significant line:“Star Trek’s past didn’t provide the key to understanding the Burn last season. Will something we’ve seen before come into play in Season 4?”
Replaying the aforementioned Mass Effect trilogy got me thinking about a theory I’d kicked around when the games were new. In short, my theory was that humanity was particularly unlucky to emerge as a spacefaring race only around forty years before the Reapers attacked. Had the Reapers’ invasion come earlier, or had humanity’s progress toward faster-than-light travel been slower, it might’ve been possible to avoid the Reapers altogether and to emerge into a galaxy with no other sentient spacefaring races.
Had the extinct Citadel Council left behind plans and warnings, humanity could have had a 50,000-year head-start on preparing for the next Reaper War! This was just a fun one, an idea I’d had when the Mass Effect trilogy was new. Giving it the full write-up treatment was fun, but in all honesty I didn’t expect it to gain much traction. Being timely helped this article a lot, though, coming only a few days after the launch of Legendary Edition. I guess there’s a lesson there about getting my articles written on time!
Significant line:“If humanity hadn’t encountered the Mars archive when they did, or if the Ilos scientists hadn’t prevented Sovereign from contacting the Reapers in dark space when it originally intended to, it seems plausible to think that humanity might have been overlooked by the Reapers – at least in this cycle!”
This is the first of the two “viral” articles that I mentioned. Published in mid-December, shortly after the episode The Examples confirmed that the DMA is artificial in nature, this piece really took off! I put quite a bit of work into this long list-article, considering twenty-six different possibilities from past iterations of Star Trek – from The Original Series to Picard – as possible culprits for creating the DMA.
In the aftermath of The Examples, my head was swimming with half-formed theories about Unknown Species 10-C. It took a while to write it all up, but what resulted was definitely one of the more fun and engaging writing projects of the past few months. Discovery’s fourth season – like the third before it – seems determined to go in an unpredictable direction, but even if that’s the case I can still say I had fun considering all of these different possible connections to past iterations of the franchise. And apparently, at least some Trekkies were just as interested in Unknown Species 10-C as me!
Significant line:“I keep thinking back to Season 3 and the Burn storyline, and how the ending to that story was something completely unpredictable and brand-new to the franchise. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Discovery go down that road again.”
So we come to the most-read piece of the year! Published in late May, a couple of weeks after the launch of Legendary Edition, in this article I considered what the “best” ending of the Mass Effect trilogy might be from an in-universe point of view. I tried to consider the pros and cons of the synthesis, destroy, and control endings to Mass Effect 3, giving my thoughts on each.
I suspect that the reason this article got so many hits is that players were looking for a guide to achieving a specific ending to the game – something the article doesn’t provide! So unfortunately, despite this being the best-performing article of the year, I suspect many readers came away disappointed having not found what they were looking for! However, I hope those that stuck around found an enjoyable and thoughtful piece, one in which I did my best to consider how the various endings to the trilogy might impact the Mass Effect galaxy, and the friends Commander Shepard made along their journey.
Significant line:“I have a hard time making this choice – it’s by far the most difficult in the entire trio of games, even though the short epilogue that follows is anticlimactic at best.”
But wait, there’s more!
Those were the top ten most-read articles that I wrote in 2021. But the year also saw several articles from 2020 pick up a number of views, and I thought it could be fun to briefly look at a few of those. We’ll just do the top five, since this article is already running long!
This article, from back in June 2020, didn’t pick up much attention at the time it was written. By the standards of the website at the time it did okay, but even then I didn’t feel it was breaking the bank in terms of its view count. But for some reason it did much better in 2021, picking up dozens and then hundreds of views in a slow trickle throughout the year.
In this list-article I picked out fifteen episodes and films that I felt could make for a great “first contact” for a new viewer; someone unfamiliar with the Star Trek franchise. I tried to avoid the obvious ones, like The Wrath of Khan, and suggested a few different stories that showcase the varied nature of Star Trek, and how the franchise can dip its toes in some very different genres. I’m glad that it found an audience in the end – and if it helped even one person introduce a friend or loved one to Star Trek, then it’s more than done its job!
Significant line:“I tried to pick a few examples of stories that hopefully show off not only the franchise at its best, but that it can be different to the preconceived notions many people have.”
This is an article that I had a ton of fun researching and writing in August 2020! If you’re a big Trekkie you’ve probably at least heard of The Firm’s 1987 song Star Trekkin’, which, as the title of my piece suggests, topped the charts here in the UK. The song is ridiculously silly, and the music video that accompanies it is even more so, but it’s a weird and wonderful piece of Star Trek’s history that I wanted to acknowledge. It’s also a curiously British thing, in some ways.
I had this song on cassette many years ago, and I can remember listening to it through headphones on the school bus with the volume turned down – just in case anyone could overhear! I also bought the mp3 of the song again when I transitioned to digital music, and I confess that I still put the song on occasionally for both a bit of fun and a blast of nostalgia. Star Trekkin’ is a weird song, but it was fun to write about – and I’m glad that Trekkies are checking out what I had to say about it!
Significant line:“It’s well worth a listen for any Trekkie who hasn’t heard it, and while I don’t promise you’ll enjoy it as a piece of music, you might just crack a smile.”
From the silly to the serious! I wrote this piece after getting sick to death of hearing so-called critics using the expression “objectively bad” to refer to things that they personally didn’t like. I’m not trying to nitpick or get mad about a technicality, but when I hear the word “objectively” used in the context of basically anything in media, and narrative choices in particular, I feel there’s a conscious attempt to try to shut down any counter-arguments. Media criticism is practically always subjective, not objective – no matter what anyone may claim.
There is no such thing as a film, video game, or TV programme that is “objectively” bad – nor “objectively” anything else. There are certainly works of entertainment that don’t follow established rules or precedent, but in every case opinions will vary from person to person. There are myriad examples of works of fiction that I personally hate that I know other people adore. Neither opinion is “objective” – and that’s that.
Significant line:“It’s got to a point where it’s been proclaimed so often that any time I see or hear the phrase “objectively bad,” I stop reading or listening. Any critic making such a statement has lost my respect and lost the argument.”
This one is pretty straightforward! In 2020 – and sadly, again in 2021 – many New Year events that are usually televised were cancelled due to the pandemic. For several years in the second half of the 2010s I’d spent my New Years Eves with the London fireworks display on TV basically by default, but with the event cancelled due to covid in 2020 I got thinking about what I might watch instead – and this list was born!
Beginning on the 30th of December 2020 and running through to the early hours of New Year’s Day, this post saw a huge spike in views, and the same thing happened this past New Year. Due to the huge number of hits it had got in the wee hours of the 1st of January it was already quite high on the list, but the extra attention it got in December 2021 propelled it to becoming one of the best-performing pieces of the year!
Significant line:“Hopefully by the time we’re thinking about the next New Year’s Eve, things will be much closer to normal.”
This article was the most-read of 2020, so I’m not shocked to see that it continued to perform well in 2021! In this article I called on ViacomCBS to remaster Deep Space Nine and Voyager, both of which remain in standard definition at time of writing. I argued that the move to streaming should be the reason why the shows get remastered, because the process will be less expensive this time around due to improvements in technology and far less of a need to produce and ship optical discs.
It doesn’t seem like ViacomCBS cares about Deep Space Nine and Voyager right now, sadly, and even though Paramount+ is playing host to both shows (in regions where it’s available), there’s still no sign of a remaster. I think it could be a good investment, because a lot of Trekkies who remember the shows fondly would be interested to see a remastered version; it would certainly drive some sign-ups to Paramount+. There are some decent fan-made remasters that you can find online, though… so that’s something!
Significant line: “A lot of folks seem to have given up on the idea of ever seeing those series in HD given the move toward online streaming and The Next Generation’s lacklustre performance on Blu-ray, but CBS All Access should be Deep Space Nine and Voyager’s ticket to a full-HD remaster.”
So that’s it!
Trekking with Dennis exceeded all of my hopes and expectations in 2021, with more than 61,000 people showing up to read the pieces that I wrote. I’m thrilled with how well the website has been performing, and I hope 2022 will be another good year.
To those of you who joined me in 2021, thank you. I hope I was entertaining, informative, or just a fun way to kill some time! You can look forward to more of the same in 2022, as I have no immediate plans to shake things up or make changes to the kind of things I do here.
2021 was a wild ride in so many ways, and it wasn’t a great year for many of us. Entertainment experiences – like films, video games, and TV shows – are some of the things that keep me going, and writing my thoughts or reviews of some of them is an extension of that. A chance to spend more time thinking and writing about Star Trek and some of my other favourites continues to be an enjoyable hobby, and a great escape, at times, from some of the less pleasant things going on out here in the real world.
Thank you for your support over the past twelve months – and here’s to 2022!
– Dennis Wednesday, 5th January 2022
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, owner, corporation, distributor, broadcaster, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
In 2001 I was bitterly disappointed by the failure of the Dreamcast – a console I’d only owned for about a year and had hoped would carry me through to the next generation of home consoles. For a variety of reasons that essentially boil down to mismanagement, worse-than-expected sales, and some pretty tough competition, Sega found itself on the verge of bankruptcy. The company responded not only by ending development on the Dreamcast, but by closing its hardware division altogether.
At the time, Sega seemed to be at the pinnacle of the games industry. For much of the 1990s, the company had been a dominant force in home video game consoles alongside Nintendo, and as the new millennium approached there were few outward signs of that changing. It was a massive shock to see Sega collapse in such spectacular fashion in 2001, not only to me but to millions of players and games industry watchers around the world.
The Sega Dreamcast failed in 2001.
Thinking about what happened from a business perspective, a demise like this was inevitable in the early 2000s. Both Sony and Microsoft were arriving in the home console market with powerful machines offering features like the ability to play DVDs – something that the Dreamcast couldn’t do – but at a fundamental level the market was simply overcrowded. There just wasn’t room for four competing home consoles. At least one was destined for the chopping block – and unfortunately for Sega, it was their machine that wouldn’t survive.
But the rapid demise of the Dreamcast wasn’t the end of Sega – not by a long shot. The company switched its focus from making hardware to simply making games, and over the next few years re-established itself with a new identity as a developer and publisher. In the twenty years since the Dreamcast failed, Sega has published a number of successful titles, snapped up several successful development studios – such as Creative Assembly, Relic Entertainment, and Amplitude Studios – and has even teamed up with old rival Nintendo on a number of occasions!
The end of the Dreamcast was not the end of Sega.
I can’t properly express how profoundly odd it was to first see Super Mario and Sega’s mascot Sonic the Hedgehog together in the same game! The old rivalry from the ’90s would’ve made something like that impossible – yet it became possible because Sega recognised its limitations and changed its way of doing business. The board abandoned a longstanding business model because it was leading the company to ruin, and even though it does feel strange to see fan-favourite Sega characters crop up on the Nintendo Switch or even in PlayStation games, Sega’s willingness to change quite literally saved the company.
From a creative point of view, Sega’s move away from hardware opened up the company to many new possibilities. The company has been able to broaden its horizons, publishing different games on different systems, no longer bound to a single piece of hardware. Strategy games have been published for PC, party games on the Nintendo Wii and Switch, and a whole range of other titles on Xbox, PlayStation, handheld consoles, and even mobile. The company has been involved in the creation of a far broader range of titles than it ever had been before.
Sega’s mascot Sonic now regularly appears alongside old foe Super Mario.
So how does all of this relate to streaming?
We’re very much in the grip of the “streaming wars” right now. Big platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ are battling for subscribers’ cash, but there’s a whole second tier of streaming platforms fighting amongst themselves for a chance to break into the upper echelons of the market. The likes of HBO Max, Paramount+, Apple TV+, Peacock, BritBox, and even YouTube Premium are all engaged in this scrap.
But the streaming market in 2021 is very much like the video game console market was in 2001: overcrowded. Not all of these second-tier platforms will survive – indeed, it’s possible that none of them will. Many of the companies who own and manage these lower-level streaming platforms are unwilling to share too many details about them, but we can make some reasonable estimates based on what data is available, and it isn’t good news. Some of these streaming platforms have simply never been profitable, and their owners are being propped up by other sources of income, pumping money into a loss-making streaming platform in the hopes that it’ll become profitable at some nebulous future date.
There are a lot of streaming platforms in 2021.
To continue the analogy, the likes of Paramount+ are modern-day Dreamcasts in a market where Netflix, Amazon, and Disney+ are already the Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation. Breaking into the top tier of the streaming market realistically means one of the big three needs to be dethroned, and while that isn’t impossible, it doesn’t seem likely in the short-to-medium term at least.
Why did streaming appeal to viewers in the first place? That question is fundamental to understanding why launching a new platform is so incredibly difficult, and it’s one that too many corporate executives seem not to have considered. They make the incredibly basic mistake of assuming that streaming is a question of convenience; that folks wanted to watch shows on their own schedule rather than at a set time on a set channel. That isn’t what attracted most people to streaming.
Too many corporate leaders fundamentally misunderstand streaming.
Convenience has been available to viewers since the late 1970s. Betamax and VHS allowed folks to record television programmes and watch them later more than forty years ago, as well as to purchase films and even whole seasons of television shows to watch “on demand.” DVD box sets kicked this into a higher gear in the early-mid 2000s. Speaking for myself, I owned a number of episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on VHS in the 1990s, and later bought the entire series on DVD. I had more than enough DVDs by the mid-2000s that I’d never need to sign up for any streaming platform ever – I could watch a DVD every day of the year and never run out of different things to watch!
To get back on topic, what attracted people to streaming was the low cost. A cable or satellite subscription is easily four or five times the price of Netflix, so cutting the cord and going digital was a new way for many people to save money in the early 2010s. As more broadcasters and film studios began licensing their content to Netflix, the value of the deal got better and better, and the value of cable or satellite seemed ever worse in comparison.
Streaming isn’t about convenience – that’s been available for decades. (Pictured: a 1975 Sony Betamax cabinet)
But in 2021, in order to watch even just a handful of the most popular television shows, people are once again being forced to spend cable or satellite-scale money. Just sticking to sci-fi and fantasy, three of the biggest shows in recent years have been The Mandalorian, The Expanse, and The Witcher. To watch all three shows, folks would need to sign up for three different streaming platforms – which would cost a total of £25.97 per month in the UK; approximately $36 in the United States.
The overabundance of streaming platforms is actually eroding the streaming platform model, making it unaffordable for far too many people. We have a great recent example of this: the mess last week which embroiled Star Trek: Discovery. When ViacomCBS cancelled their contract with Netflix, Discovery’s fourth season was to be unavailable outside of North America. Star Trek fans revolted, promising to boycott Paramount+ if and when the streaming platform arrived in their region. The damage done by the Discovery Season 4 debacle pushed many viewers back into the waiting arms of the only real competitor and the biggest danger to all streaming platforms: piracy.
Calls to boycott Paramount+ abounded in the wake of the Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 mess.
The streaming market does not exist in a vacuum, with platforms jostling for position solely against one another. It exists in a much bigger digital environment, one which includes piracy. It’s incredibly easy to either stream or download any television episode or any film, even with incredibly limited technological know-how, and that has always represented a major threat to the viability of streaming platforms. Though there are ethical concerns, such as the need for artists and creators to get paid for their creations, that isn’t the issue. You can shout at me until you’re blue in the face that people shouldn’t pirate a film or television show – and in the vast majority of cases I’ll agree wholeheartedly. The issue isn’t that people should or shouldn’t engage in piracy – the issue is that people are engaged in piracy, and there really isn’t a practical or viable method of stopping them – at least, no such method has been invented thus far.
As more and more streaming platforms try to make a go of it in an already-overcrowded market, more and more viewers are drifting back to piracy. 2020 was a bit of an outlier in some respects due to lockdowns, but it was also the biggest year on record for film and television piracy. 2021 may well eclipse 2020’s stats and prove to have been bigger still.
The overcrowded streaming market makes piracy look ever more appealing to many viewers.
Part of the driving force is that people are simply unwilling to sign up to a streaming platform to watch one or two shows. One of the original appeals of a service like Netflix was that there was a huge range of content all in one place – whether you wanted a documentary, an Oscar-winning film, or an obscure television show from the 1980s, Netflix had you covered. Now, more and more companies are pulling their content and trying to build their own platforms around that content – and many viewers either can’t or won’t pay for it.
Some companies are trying to push streaming platforms that aren’t commercially viable and will never be commercially viable. Those companies need to take a look at Sega and the Dreamcast, and instead of trying to chase the Netflix model ten years too late and with far too little original content, follow the Sega model instead. Drop the hardware and focus on the software – or in this case, drop the platform and focus on making shows.
Some streaming platforms will not survive – and their corporate owners would be well-advised to realise that sooner rather than later.
The Star Trek franchise offers an interesting example of how this can work. Star Trek: Discovery was originally available on Netflix outside of the United States. But Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Lower Decks went to Amazon Prime Video instead – showing how this model of creating a television show and selling it either to the highest bidder or to whichever platform seems like the best fit for the genre can and does work.
Moves like this feel inevitable for several of these second-tier streaming platforms. There’s a hard ceiling on the amount of money folks are willing to spend, so unless streaming platforms can find a way to cut costs and become more competitively priced, the only possible outcome by the end of the “streaming wars” will be the permanent closure of several of these platforms. Companies running these platforms should consider other options, because blindly chasing the streaming model will lead to financial ruin. Sega had the foresight in 2001 to jump out of an overcrowded market and abandon a failing business model. In the two decades since the company has refocused its efforts and found renewed success. This represents a great model for streaming platforms to follow.
All films, television series, and video games mentioned above are the copyright of their respective owner, studio, developer, broadcaster, publisher, distributor, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
This isn’t my end of year article summing up some of the highs and lows of 2021. It irks me no end to see people writing those pieces long before Christmas! If you’ve been a regular reader for a while, you might recall that the 30th of November is the website’s anniversary – it has been two years to the day since I published my first article at the end of November 2019. How time flies, eh?
Last year I commemorated the occasion by writing about the website’s first year in operation, and this time I wanted to do something similar. I’ve had two full years of talking about Star Trek and other entertainment subjects now, and it’s always helpful to step back and take a moment to reflect.
It’s been an interesting twelve months!
The biggest change for the website itself came just a few weeks ago. At the beginning of November I changed the name to Trekking with Dennis, ditching the old name and establishing a new identity for the website. This is something I’d been thinking about a lot for several months, and finally being able to pull the trigger and get it done has been incredibly cathartic.
The website’s name changed a few weeks ago.
There have been some immediate repercussions for the name change, though. Traffic to the website took a nose-dive in November, significantly down on where it had been for much of the rest of the year. I’m putting two and two together and assuming that the change in name, branding, and most importantly the website’s URL is responsible for the drop in readership. I’m optimistic that in the longer term, however, that decline will be reversed. Even if not, I don’t write here because it’s my job or because I’m chasing “internet points” and high numbers of clicks! This is my hobby, I do it for fun, and I’d still do it even if readership dropped to absolute zero!
Conversely, twice in the past year I’ve had articles go “viral” – or at least as close to viral as I’m ever likely to get!
The first article was one I’d written in early December, listing Five things to watch at New Year (instead of fireworks). The list is fairly self-explanatory; I put together a handful of New Year-themed films and shows that could’ve made for entertaining New Year’s Eve viewing in lieu of the usual fireworks shows and parties – many of which are usually televised but which were cancelled in 2020. This list was responsible for a massive spike in views which began on the 30th of December, then ran all the way through the 31st and into the early hours of the 1st of January.
This post got a lot of attention around New Year, which was neat to see.
The second article began getting huge numbers of clicks in late May, then in June absolutely rocketed up to become the most-read post I’ve ever written. More people read that one article than read everything I wrote in all of 2020 combined. And I think it’s possible that many of them came away disappointed!
The article in question was titled Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – What’s the best ending? and it was an examination of the three-and-a-half endings to Mass Effect 3, looking at the pros and cons of each. However, I think that the title may have been unintentionally misleading, judging by the search engine traffic! I think folks may have come upon the article while looking for a guide to achieving the “best” outcome to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – namely the version of the “destroy” ending in which Shepard is implied to have survived. I talk about this in the article, but it isn’t what the focus of the piece was.
This article has become the most-read ever!
I didn’t expect that article to get so many hits when I wrote it. My Mass Effect commentary in general did quite well, though, and I think that’s because I managed to get out several pieces about the series around the time of Legendary Edition’s launch – which is when there was significant interest in the games. Being timely brings rewards, it seems!
This year I’ve made significant improvements to the images used across the website. Some of the images used even as recently as March or April now feel incredibly amateurish and low-quality in comparison. I’ve been doing more with paint.net – a freeware image editor that has become my go-to for any and all image work – and I’ve learned how to do things like add a shadow or outline to text. That has allowed me to make huge improvements to the header images/banners at the top of articles, giving them a more modern, professional look.
The website’s main banner – a core part of the site’s identity – has also been massively improved. Firstly, now that I have significantly more web storage I’ve felt more comfortable using higher-resolution images. Beginning earlier in the year the expanded storage allowed me to use larger, more detailed images for article and page headers, something I feel makes the website as a whole look a lot more modern and professional than it did even at the beginning of the year. The new banner was added earlier this month as part of the aforementioned change of name, but earlier in the year I tried out a variety of different banners with different sci-fi and fantasy-themed backgrounds.
The website’s main banner.
I’ve also added quite a few different “spoiler warning” images – most of which are based on the Star Trek franchise! Again, the quality of these has improved a lot as I’ve become more comfortable with my image editing software, and I think some of the recent spoiler warnings look pretty great! I like to err on the side of caution when it comes to spoilers, so I use spoiler warnings a lot at the beginning of articles and reviews.
Filling time over the past twelve months has led me to research and learn about shows, films, and games I’d never have heard of otherwise. I reviewed titles like Space Jam: A New Legacy, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and even The Falcon and the Winter Soldier after learning about them in the course of researching topics for the website. Trekking with Dennis has, to a certain extent anyway, broadened my experiences of media this year.
I’ve seen (and reviewed) several different films and television shows over the past twelve months.
I’ve also finally got around to playing a couple of games that had been on my ever-growing list: Control and Red Dead Redemption II. I’ve written up my first impressions of Red Dead Redemption II already, and in the days ahead I’ll hopefully be writing up my final thoughts as I’m close to finishing my playthrough of the game.
Speaking of playthroughs, I didn’t get around to doing another complete “Let’s Play” series of articles. Though I’ve had a number of ideas for games I could choose, I just haven’t committed to one nor kicked off a playthrough in the way I did with Jedi: Fallen Order last year. It’s still an idea that I’d like to revisit in future, so… watch this space, I guess.
I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption II – but I didn’t write up the whole experience.
During the website’s first year in operation, I’d post articles and columns somewhat haphazardly. Sometimes I’d post daily for a couple of weeks, and at other points I’d take almost an entire week off while writing nothing. Over the last twelve months, however, that has changed. Going back to November 2020 I’ve been posting at least every other day – so there hasn’t been a long gap in between posts in more than a year. Occasionally that schedule has felt challenging, but I’ve been proud of the fact that I haven’t had any significant posting gaps for an entire twelve-month period.
April saw my most intensive posting schedule to date, as I wrote a post every single day for an entire calendar month for the first time. It wasn’t exactly planned, but once I got about halfway into April and I noticed I hadn’t skipped a day, I made it my mission to complete the month! I can keep up that kind of schedule for a while, but not indefinitely. I need occasional breaks, and being able to write articles in advance and schedule them has meant I have actually been able to take breaks across the year without interrupting my posting streak.
In April I published an article every single day.
In December 2020 I joined Twitter. I did so at first because I was having a hard time keeping track of the various franchises and their social media pages, and as I’ve never had a personal Twitter account I couldn’t follow them that way. In February I made a very tentative first post, and across the year I’d sent out a handful of Tweets to promote newly-published reviews and other articles. But as I said last year, social media isn’t really my major focus.
This should absolutely be the subject of a longer essay sometime, but Twitter in particular is a very difficult platform for me to navigate. I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I have a particularly long-winded writing style! Condensing an argument, article, or even just a fan theory into 280 characters or fewer is difficult for me. I also find that, partly as a consequence of the abbreviated posts, the conversation on Twitter can lack nuance. It’s very hard to articulate a complex thought or position on the platform because such short posts don’t easily allow for shades of grey – you can either be on one side of a debate or the other. For someone who occasionally likes to straddle the fence and acknowledge the merits and demerits of both sides of a discussion, or just to explore different interpretations and points of view, Twitter isn’t the best place for me sometimes!
That being said, I’ve recently stepped up my Twitter use. It’s been an interesting world to step into for the first time, and I’ve found it quite fun and occasionally exciting to be able to engage directly with brands and companies – or at least their social media teams. Toward the end of my time working with a large video games company, social media was just beginning to take off as a marketing tool. I had some involvement with social media campaigns in the late 2000s and early 2010s at companies I worked for or was freelancing for, so it’s been interesting in a way to be on the other side of the screen for the first time!
If you don’t follow me on Twitter I don’t just post links to articles and columns that I write here on the website. I do post other occasional Tweets, mostly about Star Trek and the other subjects I cover. I don’t get political, so don’t expect any of that, but if you want to follow me on Twitter you’re more than welcome to do so.
Feel free to follow me on Twitter: @TrekkingwDennis is my Twitter handle.
But Twitter wasn’t the only social media platform that I found myself involved with over the past twelve months. Beginning in July I planned to record audio versions of some of the articles here on the website, using YouTube and Spotify to host these audio files. I later expanded my audio offerings to include what might generously be called a “podcast.” However, I wasn’t very happy with the quality of both the audio recordings themselves, as I lack the technical know-how to make decent-sounding audio, and also, to be blunt, my own vocal performance. Upon re-listening to several audio versions of articles I sounded very wooden and stilted; the kind of performances I’d give 1/10 to if I were to rate them.
So after a sum total of four podcast episodes and about ten audio articles I scrapped the project – at least for the time being. It’s a fun idea, and a concept I’d certainly like to revisit one day, but between the audio quality, my own poor performance, and the rebranding of the website making all of the audio clips and YouTube videos out of date, I think it’s for the best that I shelve the project for now.
Audio recording isn’t my strong suit.
That being said, I did enjoy the podcasting format. Having the opportunity to talk about smaller news stories and topics that wouldn’t necessarily make for a good standalone article was fun, and it certainly broadened the range of things I discuss here on the website. Revisiting the podcast concept is something I might consider in 2022.
It was in June this year – Pride Month – that I first discussed my sexuality and gender identity. Those twin posts were among the most difficult I’ve written over the past twelve months, not because they were technically challenging but because of how personal they were. When I created the website two years ago I intended to remain wholly anonymous, with details of my personal life kept to a bare minimum. By this time last year I’d changed my mind and I’d decided I wanted to openly discuss my asexuality and my struggles with my gender identity – but it took months before I’d be able to finish writing those pieces and feel brave enough to publish them.
In June I finally felt able to discuss my sexuality and gender identity for the first time.
I now proudly display the asexual and non-binary pride flags in the upper-right corner of the website. These symbols are present no matter what page or post someone clicks on, even if the piece has nothing at all to do with asexuality or being non-binary.
Writing these pieces, though incredibly difficult at times, was deeply satisfying and cathartic. Only a few people in my offline life knew these things about me, so having a space where I could openly discuss things that I’d struggled with for decades was a truly incredible experience. It gave me the confidence to be more open in my offline life too. I don’t have a lot of friends or surviving close relatives, but I’ve been able to direct a couple of people to the website where they were able to read my words to gain more of an insight into my personal life. I’ve said before that I’m better at writing than I am at speaking – having these pieces to direct folks to is so much easier than having to explain out loud what it means to be asexual or non-binary.
It’s been a difficult process, but I finally feel comfortable referring to myself as non-binary.
I haven’t added as many articles to the Greatest Hits page this year as I did in the previous twelve months. I think that’s partly because I had some article/essay ideas in mind when I started the website and I slowly worked my way through them over the course of that first year. While I’ve had plenty to write about this year, I guess I’ve just written fewer of those long-form essays.
This is one of the best essays I’ve written in the last twelve months. Give it a read if you haven’t already!
So I think that’s enough self-congratulation for this year! As I look ahead to the next twelve months, I can’t really say that I have any major plans or changes in mind for the website or the kind of pieces I write here. I’d like to do another playthrough series at some point, and I’m certainly open to more creative projects in addition to my reviews, theories, discussion topics, list articles, and the rest. But watch this space, I suppose!
The website is very different now compared to twelve months ago. I like to think that, for the most part, these changes have been improvements – and certainly from a purely visual point of view I think the website has never looked better! As we move into the holiday season and 2022 I’m looking forward to keeping up with my regular posting schedule and writing about the subjects I’m most interested in: Star Trek, gaming, and the wide world of geeky entertainment.
Thank you for your support over the past twelve months.
-Dennis Tuesday, 30th November 2021
All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective broadcaster, studio, developer, distributor, company, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
After a difficult week for the entire Star Trek fan community, we finally got some good news. Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 is going to be available outside of North America after all.
This isn’t “total victory,” as there are still too many countries and territories where the season won’t be available – particularly in Asia and Africa. The series is not returning to Netflix. But in regions where Paramount+ exists – Australia, Scandinavia, and Latin America – the decision to withhold the new season from fans has been reversed. This was the easy bit – that particular decision was so stupidly arbitrary that it didn’t make sense to begin with.
Here in the UK, as well as elsewhere in Western Europe, the new season will go to Pluto TV – described as a “free streaming television service.” I’ll have to look up Pluto TV and how it works as I’m not familiar with it at all. In the UK, Germany, France, Russia, South Korea and “additional select countries” (whatever that might mean) Season 4 episodes will be available to purchase digitally on “participating platforms.” Could that mean Amazon Video, among others? Watch this space, I guess.
Discovery Season 4 is coming to Pluto TV!
Reversing the Netflix decision was never going to happen, not after contracts had been torn up and significant sums of money had changed hands. But this is a victory for Star Trek fans – and for fans of any franchise, series, film, or video game across the entertainment industry. It demonstrates the power of fans coming together, and how these kinds of pressure campaigns and reactions can and do have an impact even on the biggest corporations.
At the end of the day, ViacomCBS saw the backlash as a problem and a threat to their current and future profits. That’s the power that we – all of us – have as consumers and as fans. Because we all pulled together and expressed our collective anger, outrage, and frustration, the corporation had no choice but to sit up and take notice. Especially when the value of their shares began to fall.
ViacomCBS shares tumbled following the Discovery announcement and the backlash from fans.
A couple of days ago on Twitter, some anonymous nobody told me to stop “crying” about the Discovery decision because it “wouldn’t change anything.” That person was wrong. On an individual level, none of us have the power to stand up to big corporations; that’s true. But en masse, when fans pull together we can do anything. Star Trek’s history is testament to that.
In 1967-68, a letter-writing campaign orchestrated by Star Trek superfan Bjo Trimble literally saved The Original Series from cancellation at the end of Season 2. The fact that the show got a third season at all was all down to Trekkies. And later, in the 1970s, pressure from fans to bring Star Trek back led to The Animated Series and later The Motion Picture – the film which kicked off Star Trek’s renaissance going into the 1980s.
Star Trek returned in 1979 thanks to the overwhelming support of the fan community.
Following the cancellation of Enterprise in 2005, the fact that the franchise remained popular was a key factor in 2009’s reboot film getting the green light – something which ultimately led to Discovery, Picard, and the rest of modern Star Trek. At every stage of the franchise’s history, fan-led campaigns and the response from fans has been absolutely critical to keeping Star Trek going and reinvigorating the franchise. So it has proved again with Discovery Season 4.
This victory is imperfect. There are still too many Trekkies across the world who can’t access the series – and the rollout of Paramount+ is still plagued with the same problems it was yesterday. For fans in regions where Season 4 still won’t be arriving, this victory may not mean much at all. But it does give us hope for the future.
We still need to work hard to ensure Paramount+ and Star Trek are available to everyone.
ViacomCBS appeared to have forgotten about Star Trek’s international fans. But we reminded them that we’re still here, and that we still want to support the franchise and, albeit reluctantly in some cases, the corporation that owns and manages it. North American Trekkies were allies in that fight – as were many of the cast and crew of Discovery itself, applying pressure in public through their statements.
We can’t look at this as the end of the affair. Trekkies in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the world still won’t be able to watch Discovery Season 4, and there are too many regions without a planned rollout of Paramount+. We mustn’t forget that, and we have to keep pressure on ViacomCBS to ensure that they deliver for every Trekkie, not just those in the wealthy west.
Here’s hoping everyone can watch Discovery Season 4 soon.
I feel optimistic today. Not only because Discovery Season 4 is coming here in 48 hours’ time, but because ViacomCBS recognised how badly they screwed up. Rather than doubling-down and continuing to ignore the response from fans, the corporation did something to mitigate the problem, no doubt at a significant financial cost. It won’t have been free to disrupt Pluto TV’s schedule with mere hours to spare, after all! I’d been worried about Picard Season 2 and Strange New Worlds in light of the Discovery Season 4 debacle, but perhaps ViacomCBS has now learned how bad of a decision it was to try to cleave the fanbase in two. Maybe that means those shows are safe – that we will be able to watch Picard Season 2 together in February, no matter where we live.
So it’s time to investigate the mysterious Pluto TV and see how that works! Apparently Discovery Season 4 is being broadcast there at a scheduled time – 9pm local time – so I guess it works like a television channel rather than a streaming service. I don’t mind that, and if it’s possible to purchase the season or individual episodes for on-demand streaming I don’t mind doing that too. Whatever hoops we have to jump through it’ll be worth it to watch Discovery together.
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, Episodes 1-2 will be available to watch on Pluto TV in the UK, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland on Friday the 26th of November 2021. The episodes will also stream on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available, and will be available to purchase digitally in the UK and “additional select countries.” The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The fallout from the atrocious and unfair Star Trek: Discovery decision rumbles on. The ViacomCBS share price continues to tumble in the wake of their truly awful decision to piss off most of the fans of their biggest franchise, the rollout of Paramount+ continues at a snail’s pace with no specific launch dates even entering the conversation, and unfortunately we’re now seeing some divisions in the fandom itself, with North American Trekkies pitted against those of us in the rest of the world as arguments break out over the series. What a stinking mess.
At time of writing, both Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Discovery are “Paramount+ exclusives” all across the world – meaning the shows are locked behind a paywall that fans can’t actually pay for because the incompetently-managed streaming service hasn’t launched in the vast majority of countries and territories. I feel even worse for Trekkies in Australia, Latin America, and Scandinavia in some ways, though, because although Paramount+ has already arrived there, Discovery Season 4 still hasn’t been made available. If you needed any more evidence that ViacomCBS is one of the worst-run corporations in the entire entertainment industry, look no further than that arbitrary nonsense.
The logo of the mediocre streaming service at the heart of all these problems.
But Prodigy and Discovery aren’t the only Star Trek shows in production at the moment. In 2022 Trekkies have been promised Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Strange New Worlds Season 1, and Lower Decks Season 3 at a minimum. In the wake of the truly selfish and awful Discovery decision, however, I can’t help but feel very nervous about each of those shows. Will Trekkies around the world be able to enjoy any new Star Trek in the months ahead? Or will we see repeat after repeat of the Discovery mess?
Strange New Worlds seems all but certain to be denied any kind of international streaming deal. If you’re hoping to see the series hit Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, you might as well forget it – it’ll be a Paramount+ exclusive for sure. What that means in effect is that anywhere in the world without Paramount+ will miss out on Strange New Worlds. That feels like such a sure thing right now that I’d put money on it.
Don’t bet on seeing Captain Pike on your screens next year. At least not through the usual channels…
Currently, Picard Season 2 is scheduled for a February premiere. If the season runs for ten episodes, as Season 1 did in 2020, it’ll conclude sometime in late April or early May, meaning that Strange New Worlds could debut anytime around then – and certainly well before the middle of the year. At present, the UK and parts of Europe are promised Paramount+ in “early 2022” – which could be before the Strange New Worlds premiere, but it could also be long after the show has kicked off in the United States. And unfortunately, many countries and territories in Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world have no planned launch for Paramount+ at all, which means it could be 2023 or later before the service launches there. If it survives that long.
I simply don’t believe the promises ViacomCBS has made of an “early 2022” launch. Paramount+ has been so poorly managed and so incompetently handled by the corporation that a delay to these plans feels inevitable, so I’m not betting on the service launching here before the end of 2022. But even if, by some miracle, ViacomCBS actually manages to launch Paramount+ on time in Europe, that could still mean Strange New Worlds and Picard Season 2 won’t be broadcast simultaneously with North America.
Picard could well be pulled from Amazon Prime Video before Season 2.
As mentioned, Paramount+ has already arrived in Australia, Latin America, and Scandinavia – and it isn’t exactly brand-new, they’ve had it since March. But despite that, Discovery Season 4 isn’t being shown there at the same time as it’s being shown in North America… so even being very generous to ViacomCBS and assuming that the incompetent morons manage to get Paramount+ to the UK and Europe in “early 2022,” that still doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be able to watch any of the new shows on the damn thing.
As I discussed the other day, ViacomCBS paid Netflix a large sum of money to ensure that Discovery Season 4 wouldn’t be available around the world. If they had done nothing, the show would’ve come to Netflix under existing contracts and licenses – but the corporation chose to intervene, hoping to boost sign-ups to Paramount+ (though the backlash may have actually cost the platform subscribers thanks to a fan-led boycott campaign). What’s to stop ViacomCBS from doing the same thing with Amazon Prime Video, the current home of Lower Decks and Picard?
Will Amazon Prime Video lose its Star Trek shows, just like Netflix?
One of the stupidest and most offensive things about the Discovery decision is that Paramount+ is unavailable across most of the world. If ViacomCBS had pulled Discovery from Netflix because Paramount+ had already launched and they wanted to keep their own shows on their own platform, it would still be frustrating, and the timing would still be awful, but at least there’d be a vague logic to it. But because Paramount+ isn’t even available, the decision has locked the show behind a paywall that no one is able to pay for. Which, as I’ve argued on more than one occasion, means you have the absolute moral justification to pirate the series.
But this kind of decision could well be repeated. I doubt very much that Paramount+ will be available here in the UK by February, in time for Season 2 of Picard. And on current form, there’s nothing to stop ViacomCBS from doing to Amazon Prime Video what they’ve just done to Netflix – pulling the series from broadcast with days to spare. I don’t think it’s safe to assume we’ll be watching Picard Season 2 on Amazon Prime Video… let alone Lower Decks Season 3, which likely won’t be broadcast until later in the year.
Lower Decks Season 3 could also be going exclusively to Paramount+.
Rather than the Discovery mess being a one-time thing, I think as international fans we need to get used to the idea that, at least for the next year or so, watching Star Trek along with our North American friends may not be possible – or at least may not be possible via conventional methods. Picard Season 2 and Strange New Worlds Season 1 feel the most vulnerable, but realistically we’ll soon see the entire franchise disappear behind Paramount+’s paywall – regardless of whether Paramount+ is actually available.
I’d like to be proven wrong, of course, but I fear that this is the direction of travel for Star Trek as we move into 2022. This will not be a move free of long-term consequences for ViacomCBS. The corporation’s share price continues its fall, many Trekkies have pledged never to subscribe to Paramount+, and one of the biggest single pushes toward piracy since the advent of streaming will lead many fans and viewers to realise just how easy it is to pirate the latest episodes – making it even harder for Paramount+ to tempt them back in future.
A decision intended to push fans toward Paramount+ has actually led to piracy – and threats to boycott the platform.
As self-defeating as these plans may be, don’t expect to see ViacomCBS move away from them. And if you’re especially unlucky, living in a region of the world that ViacomCBS has apparently forgotten even exists, it may be the case that Paramount+ never arrives – or if it does it won’t be till 2023, 2024, or beyond. Star Trek has always told stories of people coming together – of a United Earth free from borders and division. But the ViacomCBS board haven’t even watched their own shows, or if they did the message went far over their shrivelled little profiteering heads.
I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but as I see it, the Discovery decision is just the first of many. Strange New Worlds, which has never had an international broadcaster announced, will certainly be a Paramount+ exclusive. Picard Season 2 and Lower Decks Season 3 could very easily follow the Discovery model and be pulled from Amazon Prime Video. And the rest of the Star Trek franchise? Currently the older shows are on Netflix, but the films aren’t. However, I wouldn’t bet on being able to watch any Star Trek series next year unless you have the DVD or are prepared to sign up for Paramount+.
The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 catastrophe isn’t going away anytime soon for ViacomCBS. In the days since they dropped a clumsily-worded statement that simultaneously broke the bad news to Trekkies around the world and tried to push sign-ups to Paramount+, the anger in the fandom has not abated. At time of writing, ViacomCBS shares are worth more than $2 less than they were before the announcement – a drop of more than 6%.
That brings us to the #BoycottParamountPlus discussion that has been doing the rounds in some quarters of the Star Trek fan community. In light of the decision by ViacomCBS to pull the show from Netflix internationally, some Trekkies have responded by saying they’re either boycotting Paramount+, cancelling their subscription to the service, or that they will refuse to sign up for it whenever ViacomCBS can be bothered to make it available in their part of the world. Today I wanted to consider the discussion around boycotting Paramount+, boycotts in general, and how fans can and should register their anger, upset, and frustration with a corporation like ViacomCBS.
Some fans are advocating a boycott of Paramount+ in response to the Discovery fiasco.
There are many reasons why folks – even big Trekkies like yours truly – might be wary of signing up for a service like Paramount+. The platform has not been particularly well-received in markets where it has been available, with complaints ranging from technical issues and video quality to a lack of content. At one point, all of the Star Trek films disappeared from Paramount+ with only a few days’ notice due to licensing conflicts with a different streaming platform – despite the fact that ViacomCBS owns the rights to the Star Trek films.
There’s also the cost involved. The “basic” plan, which currently costs $4.99 per month in the USA, comes with advertising. The “premium” plan ditches the commercials, but clocks in at double the price – $9.99 per month in the USA. That makes Paramount+ actually more expensive than Netflix for a comparable service, as Netflix’s cheapest plan in the USA doesn’t run any adverts and costs $8.99 per month.
Paramount+ ain’t cheap.
Paramount+ is not competitively priced, then. It’s more expensive than the big three streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, and Disney+) and though it does offer some content that the others don’t – such as live sports – its content as a whole is lagging behind. So even being as generous as we can, Paramount+ feels like poor value for what is clearly a second-tier platform.
But all of this talk of costs is rather beside the point. People who can’t afford Paramount+ won’t pick it up, and folks who can perhaps afford one or two streaming subscriptions may have to choose whether to pick up Paramount+ or an alternative. It’s all moot right now here in the UK anyway, because Paramount+ is unavailable, but I wanted to at least acknowledge that the streaming service isn’t particularly competitive with its pricing.
Paramount+ is more expensive than Netflix… and worse.
On an individual level, I can fully understand the response fans have had to ViacomCBS and to Paramount+. The anger and frustration I’ve seen expressed on social media resonates because it’s exactly how I feel, too. The decision the corporation made was horrible, and to cap it off it was announced in the most offensive and callous way possible. No apology has been forthcoming, and ViacomCBS’ marketing and social media teams are apparently burying their heads in the sand, trying to ignore the pushback.
The lack of communication from the corporation is something that I find deeply offensive. Their original message was not contrite or apologetic, and seemed designed to present what they knew would be an upsetting, anger-inducing move as some kind of net positive for international Trekkies. Combined with the marketing doublespeak and the pushing of Captain Burnham’s “Let’s Fly” catchphrase to sign off, the way they chose to communicate this decision was awful.
And as we covered the other day, the timing of this move almost seems to have been designed to inflict maximum hurt on Trekkies, coming 48 hours before Discovery Season 4 was due to premiere. They did this, it seems, for two reasons: so that a major Star Trek convention in London earlier in November wouldn’t be overshadowed by this news (particularly with several Discovery cast members in attendance), and also, if I put on my cynical hat for a moment, ViacomCBS knew that dropping this news with mere hours to go before the season premiered would prevent fans from having time to organise any kind of pushback.
The #BoycottParamountPlus hashtag and movement emerged from the Discovery debacle, but it’s in no way an organised thing right now. And with Season 4 already underway in the United States, practically all of the big Star Trek fansites and social media channels have begun their coverage of the show. Even if fans were able to organise a protest of some kind in the next few days, from the corporation’s perspective things have gone about as well as possible. They succeeded at pulling the show from Netflix, they’re forcing people to pay for Paramount+ with no alternative options, and the fan reaction has been significant, but disorganised.
Star Trek fans are disorganised right now.
I used to work in marketing, and unfortunately, the way corporations see these kinds of social media campaigns is very dismissive and negative. ViacomCBS will have expected a degree of pushback, but they also knew that by making the announcement at the last possible moment, any pushback would be disorganised during the crucial first few days after the season debuted. They’re also counting on fans having short memories, so that by the time Paramount+ rolls out in 2022 (or later, because let’s be honest they aren’t exactly competent so we can’t rely on their planned schedule) the controversy will have died down and even the most ardent critics will still sign up.
And if history is much of a guide, they’re probably right about the latter point. Look at past examples of fans pushing back against corporate decisions. Over in the Star Wars franchise, for example, The Last Jedi was so utterly detested by some fans that they swore they’d never watch anything from the franchise ever again. A heck of a lot of those folks are currently loving The Mandalorian and are excited for other upcoming projects. Even when dealing with topics more important than entertainment, like political issues, it’s increasingly true that all someone has to do is survive and keep their head down for a few days and wait for the source of controversy and its resultant outrage to blow over. Here in the UK we can point to politicians who were caught breaking coronavirus lockdowns who are still gainfully employed, and that’s just one example.
The response to The Last Jedi was negative for Disney at first, but many fans have since returned to the franchise.
One of the main counter-arguments people have been putting forward in response to suggestions of an organised boycott of Paramount+ is that they want to support the series and the hard work the creative team put into making it. I can understand that point of view too, especially coming from those fans who have a creative background themselves. Many of these folks are also ardently opposed to any form of piracy.
But I do want to ask a question: how else are fans supposed to express themselves? If a corporation misbehaves, as ViacomCBS has to put it mildly, how are fans supposed to respond to show their disgust? We can write all the tweets and articles we like, of course, but that has a very minor impact on the corporation overall. Hitting them in their finances is where we can actually hurt them, and if fans make it clear that the reason Paramount+ is losing subscribers or not signing up new ones is because of the Discovery fiasco, then perhaps they’ll sit up and take notice.
A visual metaphor.
However, there is, as the saying goes, more than one way to skin a cat. I mentioned ViacomCBS’ share price at the beginning of the piece because it’s relevant to this conversation. The short-term impact of the Discovery controversy has knocked the value of shares down by a significant amount, and that could continue in the days and weeks ahead. Whether we boycott Paramount+ or not, the corporation is already being kicked in the wallet for this decision. I hope that brings a smile to your face – it certainly did for me.
What I would have liked to see, had there been more time in the wake of the announcement to organise such a thing, would have been a blackout from all of the big fansites and social media channels: a promise not to cover Discovery Season 4 at all until it became available worldwide. Even shutting down discussion of the show for a single week would have a huge impact and would be symbolic of the fandom coming together.
A total communications blackout would send a powerful message.
In my own small way here on my minor slice of the internet, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I could write reviews of the Season 4 episodes – I’ve already seen the premiere. And I could continue to write up my theories because I’ve got dozens swimming around in my head. If I threaten to boycott Paramount+, ViacomCBS knows I’m just one person and they’ve only lost one potential customer. But by refusing to talk about the show at all, the hype bubble around Discovery is ever so slightly deflated. Fewer people talking about the show has an impact – and if we could expand that and get a proper blackout going, then I think ViacomCBS would realise how badly they’ve screwed this up.
It will never happen though, unfortunately. Many of the big Trekkie websites and social media channels work hand-in-glove with ViacomCBS, getting advance screenings, press kits, and even freebies from the corporation. Very few outlets would be willing to lose their access and their privileges, which is why we’ve seen some messages from these folks sound rather tokenistic, I’m sorry to say. I don’t want to cast doubt on anyone’s sincerity, but it kind of smarts when they’ll express their upset in one tweet and then promote their latest review or show off their exclusive pass to the virtual premiere in the next.
I can’t see a big shutdown like this ever happening.
To get back on topic, I can’t tell you what to do. If you want to boycott Paramount+, cancel your subscription, or tell ViacomCBS you’re never paying for Star Trek again, go for it my friend. It’s as good a way as any of getting “revenge” for the offensive way we as international Trekkies have been treated. But if the thought of boycotting upsets you or you want to support the cast and crew, know that the outrage that has been expressed over the past few days has already had a noticeable financial impact on ViacomCBS.
Speaking for myself, if Paramount+ were available to pre-order here in the UK, I wouldn’t. Not right now. And in my own way I’m registering my protest. Refusing to discuss the series, even if only on my own small slice of the internet, is my way of telling ViacomCBS how I feel about the decision they made and the callous way they went about announcing it. But I don’t think we need to get at each other’s throats about this boycott idea. Some fans are up for boycotting, others aren’t. Both points of view have merits and demerits, but the one thing we need to try to do as a fandom right now is come together. Fighting amongst ourselves over what to do about the situation won’t resolve anything – it’s already happened and it won’t be undone. We have to try to move forward together.
For my part, I won’t be posting any spoilers about Discovery Season 4 here on the website – beyond what I’ve already discussed prior to the season premiere, which was only based on teasers and trailers. So you can consider this website a safe space between now and February. I wish I had better news or a better idea of how to fix things, but the reality is that Discovery is ViacomCBS’ product and as consumers, we’re stuck. All we can do is register our protests in whatever way we can. It’s up to you how you protest this decision.
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
It’s been 24 hours since ViacomCBS clumsily dropped the news that Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 will be kept away from international audiences. The resultant PR disaster has caused significant harm to the corporation’s reputation, as well as that of its streaming service, Paramount+. Once my anger at the situation had simmered down, I became mired in thought. I had a whole series of articles planned here on the website about Discovery: episode reviews and theory posts twice a week, as well as keeping space open for other occasional discussion pieces about the series over the next three months. Should I put all of that on hold for now, even though Star Trek and writing are two of my biggest loves? Or should I power through despite knowing that, even in my small way on my minor slice of the internet, I’m promoting and drawing attention to a series and a company that I just don’t want to support right now?
I’m not one of the big Star Trek fan sites… obviously. I don’t have a huge audience who’d feel let down if my reviews weren’t around, or conversely who would feel the need to mute me or unsubscribe if I carried on posting about a series they aren’t able to watch. So the decision is mine alone, and I confess I’m struggling with it.
What to do?
I feel absolutely morally justified in pirating Discovery. ViacomCBS has willingly chosen to remove the series from distribution here in the UK and around the world. They actively spent money to buy out Netflix’s share in the series so that Netflix wouldn’t be able to broadcast Discovery internationally. Just to reiterate that last point, because I think it’s an important one that’s gotten lost in the heated discussion: if ViacomCBS had done nothing, Discovery would have been broadcast internationally. This isn’t a case of failing to agree licenses in time or broadcast rights expiring, they actively and willingly chose to remove the series from broadcast, and they paid money out of their own pocket in order to ensure it wouldn’t be available to international fans.
Not only that, but in some countries where Paramount+ is available – such as Australia, for example – Discovery Season 4 is still not going to be available to stream. You read that right: Australian Trekkies who’ve already subscribed to Paramount+ and paid for it still won’t be able to watch Discovery Season 4, as will any other Trekkies outside of North America whether they have Paramount+ in their country or not. Why? Because ViacomCBS loves arbitrary bullshit, it seems.
“That is one big pile of shit.”
So I feel all of us outside of North America have the moral high ground and the absolute right to pirate Discovery – and the rest of Star Trek too. When a corporation voluntarily chooses not to share their creation, piracy becomes the only way to access that content. When a film, game, or television series is available to purchase, stream, or rent, I think the vast majority of folks would agree that the moral thing to do is pay to enjoy it. But when that option is taken away, there is only one remaining option – and from a moral, ethical, and philosophical point of view I see no reason at all why international Trekkies shouldn’t pirate Discovery Season 4.
This is not the choice that I would have made. I’m a Netflix subscriber and an Amazon Prime subscriber. I first signed up for Netflix in 2017 specifically because Discovery was about to be available there; Netflix earned my subscription because of Star Trek. Over the past four-plus years I’ve paid my dues on both platforms where Star Trek is available, and if CBS All Access and/or Paramount+ had been made available here in the UK I’d have signed up for them in a heartbeat.
Trekkies were offering ViacomCBS our money… but they didn’t want it.
I’m a Star Trek fan. I want Paramount+ to succeed because I want Star Trek to succeed. I want as many people as possible, from casual viewers and total newbies to hardcore fans like myself to be able to watch Star Trek – and to pay to watch it. That’s the only way Star Trek will succeed in the medium-to-long term, and that’s the only way that the franchise’s future will be secure.
But this transactional approach is not a one-way street. It isn’t good enough for ViacomCBS to insist that fans pay to sign up to their mediocre second-tier streaming platform – and then make sure the vast majority of fans can’t because it isn’t available. It isn’t good enough to roll out Paramount+ to countries like Australia and then tell fans they still can’t watch a show that others can.
ViacomCBS has created a paywall that no one can pay for because the corporation is run by incompetent morons.
In 2021, this kind of gatekeeping is simply not acceptable. Segregating the Star Trek fanbase by geography, deeming some “worthy” of being able to watch the latest shows and others not, is not only unacceptable, it’s the complete antithesis of everything Star Trek as a franchise has always stood for. What happened to infinite diversity in infinite combinations? What happened to the dream of a better, more egalitarian world? What happened to United Earth – a place where national borders have no meaning? The answer is that it was all nonsense in the eyes of Star Trek’s corporate overlords, mere words that they don’t believe in yet were happy to sell to anyone stupid enough to pay. Star Trek is a corporate product – that’s the only way ViacomCBS sees it, bankrupt of any real-world meaning or creativity.
All that the corporation cares about is profit – yet they’re so blind, thinking purely about the short-term, that they can’t see how this pathetic, awful approach is going to cost them a hell of a lot more money than it will ever bring in.
Let’s be blunt. Paramount+ will never be Netflix. It will never be Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video either. The platform arrived on the scene ten years too late, plagued by technical issues, running some of its biggest shows in DVD quality, lacking new original content, seriously mismanaged, and with an international rollout that would make a snail riding a sloth look like Usain Bolt. Paramount+ might survive the streaming wars, but even if it does it will forever be a second-tier platform, the kind that people subscribe to for a few months out of the year to watch a show or two and then cancel.
Paramount+ will only ever be a mediocre second-tier streaming service.
From the moment CBS All Access was conceived in the mind of some ageing corporate moron it was fighting an uphill battle. Netflix was already dominant in the streaming realm, and it seems to me that some halfwit with little to no understanding of streaming or the internet looked at the money that Netflix was making, then looked at CBS’ modest library of television shows and said “make me my own Netflix.” The fact that CBS All Access had to be rebranded less than three years after it launched was already a bad sign.
Now called Paramount+ and supposedly bolstered a little by the re-merging of Viacom and CBS, the service continues to flop around like a dying fish. Paramount+ must be run by the most incompetent team of morons any corporation has ever assembled when you consider its track record. Lower Decks Season 1 didn’t get an international broadcast. Prodigy Season 1 didn’t either. All of the Star Trek films disappeared for several months because of licensing conflicts with another streaming platform. Prodigy’s broadcast schedule makes no sense. And now Discovery Season 4 is being pulled from Netflix – and ViacomCBS is willingly spending money in order to pull it from Netflix – months or perhaps even years before Paramount+ will be available internationally.
I guess it’s some kind of visual metaphor…
It’s so disappointing to see ViacomCBS mishandle and mangle their biggest franchise. How can Star Trek have a shot at success with this team of corporate fuckwits running it into the ground at every opportunity? If Paramount+ fails in the years ahead, and drags Star Trek down with it, it won’t be the fault of the writers, producers, and actors across the various shows. It’ll be entirely the fault of a corporate board who haven’t got a clue what they’re doing and who don’t understand the most basic realities of running an entertainment company in 2021.
We live in a connected, globalised world. ViacomCBS (and their corporate predecessors) pushed hard to create this world because it means more profit. More Star Trek fans equals more revenue equals more profit. But the global, interconnected fandom that ViacomCBS has created means that the internet – our primary communication tool – is going to be awash with spoilers. Even the most ardent Trek-avoider would be hard-pushed to steer clear of everything Star Trek-related online, especially if they have friends within the fandom.
We live in a connected world.
YouTube channels, websites, and social media will be drowning in spoilers, making the dilemma that much more tricky for the Trekkie with a moral compass. If they decide to be patient and wait it out, despite ViacomCBS not actually providing anything close to a specific timeframe – “2022” could mean January or it could mean December, and I don’t believe for a moment that the hapless fuckwits will be able to deliver the rollout on time anyway – chances are sooner or later they’ll stumble upon a spoiler, or be served up spoilers on a plate by an algorithm. Some websites and social media outlets have pledged to tag any spoiler material, but even then it’s still highly likely that things will slip through the cracks.
Over the past 24 hours I’ve been continuously trying to think of ways to try to mitigate the situation, given that the Netflix decision is clearly final. One compromise could have been to simply delay Discovery Season 4 for everyone – including North American viewers. Waiting until next year would mean we could all watch the series together. But that won’t work.
The decision to pull Discovery from Netflix appears to be final.
The painfully slow rollout of Paramount+ is going country by country and region by region, with many parts of the world having received no information about if or when the platform will be available. In the UK at least we know that there’s a target: 2022. Many countries, such as Japan, don’t even have that. So this idea – while well-intentioned – would either delay the series indefinitely, and certainly well beyond the end of next year, or still end up shutting out a huge number of fans and viewers.
So that brings us to the Trekkie’s dilemma. The way I see it, if you’re outside of North America (which 95% of the planet’s population are, lest we forget), you have three options: wait patiently for ViacomCBS to decide that you’re allowed to watch Discovery, use a VPN to trick Paramount+ into thinking you’re in North America, or pirate the series.
A map of the world according to ViacomCBS.
The first option is what the corporate morons assume everyone will do. That isn’t true, of course, and the PR clusterfuck of the last 24 hours will seem like nothing when Discovery rockets to the top of the most-pirated shows list next week. I think we can expect to see some significant share price falls for ViacomCBS over the coming days and weeks – I certainly wouldn’t be investing in ViacomCBS stock if I were you.
The second option is the worst of the bunch. Not only are you having to jump through hoops to watch Discovery, but you’re paying ViacomCBS for the privilege. They’ve slapped you in the face, and in response you’ve pulled your wallet out and slipped them some cash while saying “do it harder next time, daddy.”
The third option is the one I daresay many Trekkies will avail themselves of. With a tiny amount of effort it’s possible to find any film or television show online, either to stream or to download, and in 2021 if ViacomCBS doesn’t know that then they’re even more out of their depth than I thought.
ViacomCBS is pushing people to take the third option: piracy.
ViacomCBS has encouraged all of us to sail the high seas.
I’m going to watch Discovery Season 4. Interpret that however you’d like. But I’m not going to cover the series extensively here on the website. Rather than individual episode reviews, what I’ll probably do is write up a full season review at the end as a single article. And Fridays, when my Discovery Season 4 reviews would’ve been published, can instead be dedicated to write-ups of older episodes of Star Trek – something I’ve been meaning to do more of here on the website for a while. I’ll pick thirteen Star Trek episodes from the franchise’s extensive back catalogue and write about those instead.
I don’t want to give ViacomCBS or Star Trek: Discovery any more attention at the moment. The corporation has chosen, for utterly inexplicable reasons, not to share the series with its most ardent supporters, so I refuse to do anything to support the show right now. I feel sorry for the actors, directors, and the rest of the creative team, because their incredible hard work under difficult circumstances during the pandemic is now soiled by this truly disgusting corporate mess. But I can’t in good conscience publish weekly reviews, theories, and other discussion pieces drawing attention to the series when I so fundamentally disagree with the way ViacomCBS has conducted itself.
I’m going to go back and re-watch some earlier Star Trek episodes and write about those instead.
I opened my wallet and offered ViacomCBS my hard-earned cash. I’ve paid for two streaming platforms in order to watch Star Trek. I’ve bought the merchandise. I provide the Star Trek franchise and Paramount+ free publicity here on the website simply by discussing the various shows. My website has an American audience, so I know for a fact many of the folks who read my reviews and theories are engaged with Paramount+. But this relationship has turned toxic, and even though I was offering ViacomCBS my cash, my time, my effort, my passion, and my attention, they chose to throw it back in my face. They told me to go fuck myself, so I’m returning the favour.
What should you do? I can’t answer that. Your conscience has to be your guide. Are you confident in your ability to avoid spoilers for the next few months? If you live in a region without a Paramount+ release window, are you okay with the idea of waiting perhaps two years or more to watch the show? I can’t officially condone or encourage piracy – it’s almost certainly breaking the rules wherever in the world you happen to be. But from a philosophical point of view, if you’re a Trekkie outside of North America I think you’re absolutely morally justified in pirating the heck out of Discovery – as well as every other Star Trek show and ViacomCBS production.
I would usually put a disclaimer here saying that the Star Trek franchise is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The message above was posted on social media earlier this evening. What follows is my immediate response – a somewhat unstructured, angry response. For a more structured argument about ViacomCBS’ mishandling of the Star Trek brand internationally, check out this article.
I cannot believe what I just read. Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth season is not going to be made available on Netflix outside of the United States, and will only be available for international viewers sometime next year when Paramount+ arrives. I’m still digesting this truly awful news.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had a go at ViacomCBS – the corporation which owns and mismanages the Star Trek brand – for refusing to make Star Trek: Prodigy available internationally, despite that show being a co-production between CBS Studios and Nickelodeon… a ViacomCBS-owned channel that’s available in more than 70 countries around the world.
This Discovery news comes after Prodigy has been denied to international fans. Lower Decks Season 1 was also denied a simultaneous broadcast internationally, arriving almost six months later. So I can’t be alone in asking what the fuck ViacomCBS thinks it’s playing at. Are they trying to encourage piracy? Do they just not care about Star Trek? Perhaps they want to do as much harm as possible to their own brand, and that of their mediocre second-tier streaming platform at the heart of these problems: Paramount+.
ViacomCBS is desperately but incompetently pushing Paramount+.
To make this announcement less than 48 hours before Discovery’s fourth season was due to premiere is beyond insulting. It’s the latest and most egregious “fuck you” in a long line going back a couple of years at least from a corporation that doesn’t give a damn about Star Trek’s sizeable international fanbase.
Not only is Season 4 not going to be available on Netflix, but Seasons 1-3 have been pulled – or will shortly be pulled – from the streaming service as well, gated off behind a paywall that doesn’t exist because Paramount+ isn’t available here in the UK (and elsewhere) yet. It is at least possible to get the first three seasons of the show on blu-ray, so fans who want to watch or re-watch earlier seasons will be able to do so that way. But Season 4 isn’t available… or at least it isn’t available via conventional methods.
Perhaps this is some kind of visual metaphor?
When corporations choose to become gatekeepers and refuse to share the content that they’ve produced with fans who are literally holding their wallets open screaming “take my money!” then piracy, by default, becomes the only option to access that content. Discovery actually will be available internationally, because this is the 21st Century and most folks have internet access. With a tiny amount of effort it’s going to be possible to pirate every episode of the show, allowing fans to enjoy Discovery while ensuring that ViacomCBS doesn’t see a single measly cent by way of profit. That isn’t the decision fans made, it’s the choice ViacomCBS made.
Star Trek became an international franchise at the behest of ViacomCBS and its corporate predecessors. They advocated this kind of corporate globalism because – like the greedy little Ferengi they are – they saw profit beyond America’s borders. There are Trekkies from Tierra del Fuego to St. Petersburg because globalism proved so attractive for ViacomCBS, but the corporation has once again proved beyond any doubt that it doesn’t give even the tiniest of fucks about anyone outside of North America.
Leaked photograph from the ViacomCBS boardroom.
So as I said a couple of weeks ago about Prodigy: it’s totally morally justifiable to pirate it. Go right ahead and pirate Prodigy, and pirate Discovery too. ViacomCBS has told us to keep our money and fuck off, so let’s make sure they don’t ever see another penny of it. What’s the point in continuing to support a corporation that leaves its international fans out in the cold because it can’t manage the incredibly basic task of broadcasting a television show?
Broadcasting and streaming is ViacomCBS’ entire business model – yet time and time again they fuck it up. Paramount+ is a mediocre platform at best that will never be the Netflix and Disney+ competitor that its corporate masters wish it to be. It arrived on the scene a decade too late, with too little original content, and its rollout even within the United States has been horribly mismanaged by a corporation that appears to be run by absolute morons. Paramount+ recently lost the rights to all of the Star Trek films for several months – despite ViacomCBS owning the rights to those films. And as we’re learning the hard way once again today, its international rollout has been pathetically slow.
Only for fans in North America.
It’s such a shame for all of the actors, directors, and behind-the-camera crew who clearly have put a lot of work into Discovery Season 4 that their work is going to be tainted by a truly selfish and shitty business decision. It isn’t their fault, yet their hard work is now soured in the minds of many of the show’s biggest fans because of incomprehensible corporate bullshit.
I’ve been disappointed with ViacomCBS for a while for their pathetic mishandling of the Star Trek brand, but this latest attack has come as a body blow. I’m angry – actually legitimately angry – with a cowardly corporation that doesn’t have the faintest idea how to operate in a 21st Century television and streaming market. Their mismanagement will continue to harm Star Trek – perhaps fatally so.
ViacomCBS is the company responsible for mismanaging Star Trek.
I can’t speak for every Trekkie, but a lot of Star Trek’s international fans are losing patience with this corporation. It’s long past time for ViacomCBS to get a grip and start managing the franchise properly – before too much harm is done. Star Trek is an amazing franchise that everyone should be able to watch together and share with one another no matter where they’re from – but disgusting and insulting corporate decisions continue to get in the way and actively harm Star Trek.
Lower Decks is so much less than it could and should be entirely because ViacomCBS fucked up its international broadcast. The same will be true of Prodigy – a decision compounded in that case by the utterly ridiculous broadcast schedule. Four episodes, then a two-month break? What fuckwit came up with that idea? And now Discovery.
Here’s a newsflash for the ViacomCBS board: fans aren’t going to wait for the mediocre Paramount+ to arrive. A lot of Trekkies will pirate the show, and a lot of viewers who had been looking forward to seeing it on Netflix just won’t bother; they’ll have forgotten all about it by next year. So let’s all sarcastically applaud ViacomCBS for hammering a nail into the coffin of Star Trek. I hope someone out there with a modicum of business acumen will be able to step in and save the day – but I’m not holding my breath.
The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
A few months ago I wrote an article about how space exploration has become boring. The title was deliberately provocative, and of course it goes without saying that I’m approaching the subject from the point of view of a layman. But the point I made stands – it’s been a very long time since any mission to space, and even longer since any crewed mission to space, was of anything more than minor interest.
Many space missions in recent years saw unmanned probes launched, satellites placed into orbit, and the only missions with crews aboard visited the International Space Station. The ISS is without doubt an amazing feat of technology and engineering – but after more than two decades of permanent inhabitation, it’s long since lost much of its interest from the point of view of the layman. Scientifically and technologically space continues to be very important, but for me – and many other folks as well – it’s no longer the inspirational, aspirational place it once was.
The International Space Station.
Partly that’s a consequence of the scaled-back nature of crewed missions, the budget cuts space agencies have faced since the end of the Cold War and its associated space race, and perhaps the difficulty, expense, and length of time required to undertake missions to places we’ve never been before. But regardless of the cause, missions to space in the real world have lost much of their lustre over the decades, and no longer feel as special or as interesting as they once did.
But William Shatner’s recent trek to space was different. Even an old cynic like me felt genuine awe and wonder at the idea that Shatner – Captain Kirk himself – was actually going into space. For decades, journeys to space were the exclusive purview of a tiny number of well-trained air force pilots and scientists. Just getting into the astronaut or cosmonaut programmes required either a career as a high-flying ace fighter pilot or a doctorate in a relevant scientific field. There have been attempts to put spaceflight within reach of more people – Christa McAuliffe, who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, was set to be the first teacher to travel into space. But generally speaking, becoming an astronaut and travelling to space was out of reach for practically all of us.
William Shatner aboard Blue Origin’s NS-18 mission.
People like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have talked in vaguely-defined terms about future missions to space or to Mars that would bring along more civilians and regular folks, but those missions seemed like a long way off. Then came missions in the last couple of years taking paying passengers – but at such a high cost that space felt like a playground for the billionaires’ club and was still beyond the reach of most ordinary people.
William Shatner’s space flight has gone a long way to challenging all of those perceptions. There’s something truly inspirational about the idea of Captain Kirk actually going into space; just writing those words feels incredibly surreal. This character was at the head of a television show and a franchise that, for more than half a century, has done more than any other to inspire people to look to the stars and to look to a future where space travel will be something anyone can participate in. And here he was, actually making that dream a reality in the real world.
Shatner with his crewmates.
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Star Trek as an inspirational franchise. Generations of people have watched the series and been inspired by its message, its morals, its optimism, and its technology. The franchise has a track record of bringing its technologies to life – everything from tablet computers, wireless communicators, video calling, and more were “predicted” by Star Trek before becoming a reality. And perhaps that’s what makes William Shatner’s space flight so inspiring – he made the dream of going to space come true as well. There’s hope that, if Captain Kirk can actually travel into space, as Star Trek depicted all those years ago, perhaps the rest of us can too.
Not to be impolite, but at the age of 90, William Shatner isn’t in the prime of his life in terms of his physical condition. He looks great for 90, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a bit of a belly, a few too many wrinkles, and the ever-present toupée! But I’m not here to criticise any of that – because it’s those things that make his journey to space even more astonishing and aspirational. Not only is Captain Kirk himself in space, but here’s someone who’s older than any previous space traveller, who isn’t in the best shape of his life, and yet still it was possible to undertake that incredible journey. By simply being who he is, Shatner has once again inspired millions of folks who might’ve felt space travel was beyond them. Perhaps they felt they were too old, or they have a health condition, or something else. But seeing William Shatner at age 90 boarding that rocket and floating around up in space demonstrates to all of us that such a journey might be possible after all.
William Shatner and his crewmates boarding their spacecraft.
To me, that’s the success of this latest mission to space. For the first time in a very long time, a crewed space mission managed to get me genuinely excited and emotional; I felt I was sharing that moment with William Shatner and the others aboard the rocket. His sense of awe and wonder was so genuine, and the way he spoke and conveyed how it felt was passionate and beautiful.
There are still issues with space travel. The fact that it costs such an insane amount of money is going to be a barrier for a lot of people. But that was true of many inventions from the motor car to the aeroplane, and now those methods of travel are available to many more people than they were when they were first invented.
The idea that Captain Kirk could actually go into space has captured the public imagination in a unique way.
It feels like we’re on the cusp of a new age of space exploration. No longer will space be the exclusive realm of government-funded agencies, gated off to all but a select few people who were privileged enough to be able to head down the perfect career path. Commercial spaceflight has the potential to open up space to untold millions of people – and not just for short fun jaunts either. Orbital hotels, moon colonies, the exploration of Mars, and so many more things all feel one step closer today than they did just a few short weeks ago. That isn’t William Shatner’s doing – Blue Origin, SpaceX, and other companies have been building up to this moment for years. But once again, William Shatner brought space to the fore and captured the public’s imagination in a way that only he could.
I have no time for the naysayers. Prince William, one of the last wriggling vestiges of a dying aristocratic elite, had the audacity to criticise Shatner’s spaceflight shortly after he returned to Earth, saying that we should focus our energies on fixing climate change, not racing to colonise new worlds. But why can’t we do both? And not only that, but there’s more to fighting climate change than getting to the precious “net zero” that seems to be the fetish of our current crop of leaders. Space can offer solutions – harvesting solar energy, for example, capturing carbon and removing it from the atmosphere, or even building solar shades to shield parts of the Arctic and Antarctic are among many hypothetical ways that missions in space could have a real-world impact. And for all of the criticisms I made earlier of space exploration and missions to the ISS feeling boring from the layman’s perspective, the scientific advances they provide have already made an impact here on Earth.
William Shatner looking down at Earth from space.
For the first time in a very long time, a real-life mission to space managed to capture my attention – and showed off to millions of people that the dream of space travel, embodied by television franchises like Star Trek, hasn’t died. There’s the real and genuine potential to repeat this feat, and as technology continues to improve and costs come down, maybe spaceflight will be within reach of the average person sooner than we might expect.
All William Shatner did was accept an invitation and take his seat. But that simple act, and the wonderful reaction he had to it, was life-changing – and not just for the man himself. Just as he did in the 1960s when he commanded the starship Enterprise, William Shatner has once again inspired people all over the world, showing us that it isn’t futile to look to the stars.
Some images used above courtesy of Blue Origin via YouTube. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I like Star Trek. I’ve been a Trekkie since I first watched The Next Generation in the early 1990s, and watching that series kicked off a lifelong love of the franchise that continues to this day. Over a span of three decades I’ve watched every single film and episode – practically all of them several times over – and in addition I’ve spent a lot of money on plenty of merchandise, ranging from action figures and coffee table books to artwork and stationery. My house is decorated with Star Trek posters and action figures in display cases, and if you ever stop by for a coffee you’ll almost certainly drink it out of a Star Trek mug. But Star Trek, it seems, doesn’t reciprocate.
At the very least, the suits in charge of the franchise at ViacomCBS do not care one iota about any Star Trek fan outside of North America – as evidenced by the fact that, for the second year in a row, a brand-new Star Trek series is not going to be made available to fans across the world.
Logo for ViacomCBS – the corporation that owns Star Trek.
Star Trek: Prodigy premieres in a couple of days’ time, and just as happened with Lower Decks in August 2020, the series is going to be kept away from fans outside of North America. This decision re-emphasises ViacomCBS’ disgusting attitude to the franchise’s non-American fans, but in one significant way it’s an even worse and more egregious insult than the Lower Decks debacle was.
Why do I say that? Because Prodigy is a co-production between CBS Studios and Nickelodeon – both of which are ViacomCBS subsidiaries. Nickelodeon, as I’m sure you know, is a children’s television channel that is broadcast across the world – in more than 70 countries from New Zealand to Ukraine and South Africa to Pakistan. In order to make Prodigy available to a worldwide audience, all ViacomCBS would have needed to do was put the series on Nickelodeon – something incredibly easy to do as Nickelodeon is a channel it already owns and operates. It wouldn’t have even cost the corporation any money, as there would have been no expensive rights agreements or broadcast licenses to negotiate.
ViacomCBS literally owns Nickelodeon and all of its international channels.
The decision not to broadcast the show on Nickelodeon can only be taken one way: it’s an insult. ViacomCBS is once again throwing up a middle finger to Star Trek’s international fanbase – a sizeable fanbase that must at the very least equal the number of Trekkies in the United States.
At first I thought I was okay with it. Prodigy is a show for kids, after all, and most kids won’t care. But the more I thought about it the more I kept returning to the argument I made in the run-up to Lower Decks’ premiere last year: that this is not an acceptable way for ViacomCBS to behave.
Star Trek became a global brand at the behest of ViacomCBS and its predecessors. The corporation adores globalism because it wants to make more and more profit – like a greedy Ferengi – from people who don’t live in the United States. But creating a global brand comes with a responsibility that doesn’t stop at international borders, and for seemingly no reason at all ViacomCBS is abdicating its responsibility to Trekkies.
Photo from the ViacomCBS boardroom.
I get it – ViacomCBS wants people to sign up for its mediocre second-tier streaming platform: Paramount+. The future is digital, and the corporation wants Paramount+ to be a success as more people around the world stop tuning in to broadcast television. But if that’s the case, ViacomCBS needs to make Paramount+ available internationally – the platform’s international rollout has been painfully slow and incredibly patchy, with films and shows the corporation owns not being available on the platform even after Paramount+ arrives in some regions.
ViacomCBS is trying to tie Star Trek to Paramount+, using the franchise to hook Trekkies in and convince us to subscribe. There’s a profit motive here – but that doesn’t absolve them of the responsibility they have to fans of their programmes and franchises. Star Trek only exists and was only able to be revived in 2017 because of its international fanbase – a deal with Netflix reportedly paid for almost the entire cost of Discovery’s first season. Yet time and again, ViacomCBS is content to ignore its international fans and leave us in the cold.
Prodigy will only be available to American audiences via Paramount+.
This isn’t just about one series – or two series now, counting Lower Decks last year. The Star Trek franchise is constantly prioritising fans in North America over us out here in the rest of the world. Trailers and clips for upcoming shows or even marketing material will be quite literally gated off on social media, with fans outside North America being told that “this content is not available in your location.” Star Trek’s official shop offers a paltry range of products internationally when compared to its North American offerings, and ViacomCBS is quite happy to ignore any and all questions on the subject of international availability.
Look at any recent social media post promoting Prodigy and you’ll see a slew of messages and comments from fans overseas. Most are polite, simply enquiring about if and when the series will be made available in their neck of the woods. And Star Trek’s social media team ignores every last one of them – just as they did last year when fans were clamouring for information about Lower Decks.
A handful of comments from social media directed at the official Star Trek pages and channels – all of which were ignored. Names redacted.
There has been no official word from ViacomCBS or the Star Trek social media teams about Prodigy’s international debut – and there won’t be. They simply do not care enough to even give a non-answer like “coming soon.” Instead, fans are left to shout into the void, bang our heads against a wall of silence, and whatever other metaphor you can think of for trying to get information from an uncaring corporation.
Last year there was an excuse – a piss-poor one, but an excuse nevertheless: the pandemic. Disruption to production and broadcast schedules – especially post-production work on Discovery Season 3 – meant that last-minute changes were necessary. Lower Decks was bumped up to be broadcast ahead of Discovery, and there wasn’t time to sort out the international rights. That excuse is bullshit, of course, because as I said last year it’s still up to ViacomCBS to broadcast or delay the series, meaning they could have waited to ensure fans everywhere could watch it together. But this year even that paltry excuse no longer applies.
There are two reasons why: Prodigy’s production hasn’t been impacted by the pandemic to anywhere near the same extent, and as already discussed, ViacomCBS owns Nickelodeon and has the option to broadcast the series on a channel that they own in 70+ countries around the world.
Prodigy is a Nickelodeon and CBS Studios co-production.
I want ViacomCBS and Paramount+ to succeed because I want Star Trek to succeed and continue to be produced. But if the corporation is so callous and uncaring when it comes to fans like me, what am I supposed to do? It’s a toxic relationship right now; a one-way relationship with no reciprocity. Prodigy is supposed to be a series that will bring in new fans to Star Trek – but it’s also supposed to be a show with a lot to offer to Star Trek’s existing fans. For “business reasons,” though, only certain fans that ViacomCBS deems important enough or worthy will be permitted the privilege of watching the series.
In 2021, with the global interconnected fandom that ViacomCBS pushed to create, segregating a series or film geographically is indefensible. A delay of a day or two between regional broadcasts might be acceptable – though there’s no technical reason why, given the technologies involved. But to broadcast a new show in one location and not even give lip service to when it might be available anywhere else? It’s wrong – and more than that, it’s stupid and self-defeating from a business perspective.
A map of the world according to ViacomCBS.
ViacomCBS wants as many people as possible to tune in to Star Trek. They want as many kids as possible to watch Prodigy, and I would assume they’re planning to sell merchandise based on the show as well – though the lack of any obvious Prodigy merchandise so far is yet another indication of the moronic and amateurish way the corporation is handling its biggest brand. But if the goal is to get fans excited and talking about the show, hyping it up in the run-up to its premiere and generating the kind of online buzz that makes television shows a success, cutting off at least half the fanbase is the dumbest and most idiotic thing the corporation could possibly do.
From Game of Thrones to Squid Game, online chatter is what drives people to check out a new television series. People who love something and who are passionate about it tell their friends and their social media followers, and that engagement drives people to the show – and the platform that hosts it. By deliberately and intentionally preventing many Trekkies from accessing Prodigy, ViacomCBS has killed a lot of the hype and excitement that the show could have generated.
Who knows how much bigger Prodigy could have been if the corporation in charge had handled its broadcast better?
The corporation has evidently learned nothing from the muted and lacklustre response to Lower Decks last year – a response that, sadly, has seen the show fail to hit the heights it could have in terms of viewership. Even when Lower Decks did arrive internationally and even when its second season did get the simultaneous broadcast it needed, a lot of damage had already been done, and the opportunity to make the series bigger than it ultimately became was missed.
Lower Decks and Prodigy are the two most unique and different offerings that the Star Trek franchise has arguably ever produced. Out of everything the franchise has on the horizon, it’s these two shows more than any others that had the potential to bring in hordes of new fans and to take the Star Trek franchise as a whole to the next level in terms of audience numbers and the scale of the fanbase. These opportunities have been pissed away by a corporation that clearly has no idea how to run an international franchise.
Fans outside North America might as well stare out of the window – because Prodigy won’t be hitting our screens any time soon.
When a corporation deliberately and wilfully treats a large section of its fanbase with such blatant disrespect, what can we do?
Since ViacomCBS clearly doesn’t care about anyone outside of North America, it seems to me that there’s no point in continuing to engage with the corporation or support it. They don’t care about us, so why should we care about them? And why should any non-American Trekkie consider spending a single penny on any ViacomCBS product in future? It seems like it’s only a matter of time until the next Star Trek show or film isn’t made available to us either.
If ViacomCBS chooses not to make Star Trek available to fans, we might as well pirate it. They clearly place no value on the money we could pay them or the passion we could have when talking about upcoming shows and films, so why bother? We might as well pirate all of Star Trek – and everything else ViacomCBS does, too. If they’ve chosen not to make Prodigy available internationally, and won’t even have the basic decency to answer repeated questions from fans, piracy is the default option – quite literally the only way to watch the series. It didn’t have to be, but this is a choice ViacomCBS willingly made.
When a corporation chooses to place no value on its biggest and most passionate fans, and takes increasingly stupid business decisions that almost seem intended to harm their franchise, they’ve made their decision. The lack of a response to these basic questions from fans about Prodigy’s availability or about the Paramount+ rollout is in itself an answer. And that answer is: “go fuck yourself, we don’t give a shit about you.”
In most jurisdictions around the world, piracy – defined above as the sharing of copyrighted material over the internet – is not legal. This essay was an examination of the moral and ethical implications of piracy only, and was categorically not an endorsement or encouragement to download any individual film or television series, nor should anything written above be interpreted in that manner. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The media is truly excellent at manipulation. Take the UK’s recent petrol and diesel shortages as an example. A “leak” from a private meeting between government officials and industry leaders suggested that the chronic shortage of lorry drivers – which extends far beyond Britain’s borders, afflicting much of western Europe and even the United States – could make it harder to ensure fuel deliveries to petrol stations. The inevitable and quite predictable result of the press reporting this as if it were imminent was panic-buying; a run on fuel.
It wasn’t until the media-reported “leak” that the panic-buying began, which led to the very fuel shortages that headlines screamed were coming. In short, the UK’s current fuel predicament is entirely a media-created problem, but I doubt very much that the responsible parties will ever be held accountable.
There has been a run on petrol stations in the UK over the last few days, all thanks to the media.
The same is true of other instances of panic-buying over the last couple of years. The infamous toilet paper shortage at the beginning of the pandemic was, once again, a media-created firestorm. And many media outlets, particularly tabloids, haven’t stopped trying to create more “shortages” to report on ever since. They prioritise sales, clickbait, and the revenue that panic-inducing headlines provide over any semblance of journalistic integrity, taking photos of supposedly “empty” shelves in supermarkets and showing them to the world under exaggerated headlines promising imminent doom.
My first ever job when I was still at school was working in a convenience shop in a small town. On any day of the week it was possible to find an empty shelf – most shops and supermarkets don’t have large stockrooms any more, with the just-in-time delivery system bringing everything on a daily basis. By the time evening rolled around, some shelves could look pretty bare. It’s at these times of day that many tabloid “journalists” and their photographer allies sneak into supermarkets to snap pictures of empty shelves in a desperate quest to keep the public buying newspapers (a dying format) or clicking on headlines proclaiming that we’re all about to starve to death.
You can find scenes like this seven days a week in most supermarkets, convenience stores, and food shops.
Even if there are individual industry-specific shortages or supply chain problems, these aren’t going to be permanent. The fuel panic has already blown over in much of the country, with only the London area still fully in the grip of the crisis. And promises of additional drivers and tankers backed up by the army should see that settle within a matter of days. Likewise in food, where certain products have been out of stock. These things don’t last forever, because it’s in everyone’s interest, from the government to the shops to their suppliers, to figure out solutions as quickly as possible. The only ones who benefit in any way from these shortages – or reported “shortages” – are the media.
So why, then, am I finding it hard to resist the temptation to join in and start panic-buying?
Partly this is an anxiety thing, and folks who suffer from anxiety to a worse degree than I do must surely be feeling awful right now. Headlines are screaming of shortages in fuel, meat, fruits and vegetables, and even proclaiming that Christmas is about to be “cancelled” due to a lack of festive food and toys. For people with mental health conditions, these kinds of headlines are just awful.
“Christmas is cancelled!” scream the headlines in some failing newspapers.
The rational part of my brain is fighting the irrational side – as it always has to. Are there enough lorries to transport everything I need? Will I have enough food? Will I be able to get enough food for the cats? What about my medication? What about cat litter? What about bin liners? What about this, that, and the other things?
It’s so very tempting to say “I’ll just pick up a couple of extras.” That doesn’t feel like panic-buying, and I can even rationalise it to myself by saying that I’m not panicking, I’m just being sensible and taking precautions in case other people start panic-buying. Besides, the supermarket won’t miss a couple of extra tins of potatoes and packets of cat food, right? They’ve got loads of stuff on the shelves (despite the false pictures printed in the newspapers!)
A shortage of HGV drivers is one factor in some of these “shortages.”
The problem with that mindset is that, when everyone does the same thing, shops run out of everything more quickly. When people who have their tanks half-full stop by the petrol station for a top-up “just in case,” fuel runs out. And that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing over the past week. People who didn’t need to buy fuel, and wouldn’t have under normal circumstances, have started queueing up to top up their vehicles in case there’s a shortage caused by panic-buying… not realising or acknowledging that they themselves are part of the problem.
It’s an easy trap to fall into. And it’s easy to talk oneself into it, too. After all, if there’s even the possibility of things running out, it makes sense to jump in ahead of the panic and stock up, right? The mindset of “other people panic-buy; I’m just being sensible” is a way for all of us to rationalise what is really not rational behaviour. The fear of missing out, of sitting at home without food or toilet paper or petrol wishing we’d taken action sooner is pushing people on, spurring them to take irrational action and do the wrong thing at the wrong moment.
Other people panic-buy, but when *I* rush out to buy things I don’t need, I’m “just taking sensible precautions” or “stocking up.”
In the west, most people have never had to experience a genuine shortage of anything. In the UK, there haven’t really been any major problems or shortages since the 1970s, meaning anyone under the age of 50 can’t remember the three-day week or rolling blackouts. There hasn’t been a petrol shortage since fuel protests in the year 2000, and that was swiftly resolved. While there were supply issues for a few select products – like toilet paper – early last year that are certainly playing into people’s fears, it’s been a generation since the country last endured any major shortages.
With no experience of hard times to fall back on, people are more inclined to panic. Some genuinely fear starvation – though their girth suggests that such a fate would take a very long time indeed. But most people simply fear the unknown: what will a world without easy access to abundant supplies of food look like? Not knowing leaves folks much more inclined to panic.
The UK hasn’t experienced problems like these since Ted Heath was Prime Minister in the mid-1970s.
The media as a whole is being phenomenally irresponsible, though certain publications are worse than others. The incompetent government isn’t helping, of course, and things like a cut to benefits (welfare), a lower-than-expected rise in pensions, tax rises, and major price rises for electricity and gas bills all pile on top of the supposed shortages, adding to a sense of unease and worry among the population. On a personal level, I’m seeing my income shrink right at the moment my bills rise. With people already worried about paying for the basics like food and heating, the threat of food supplies drying up or no fuel at the pumps was the last straw for a lot of people.
It’s understandable, then, why people feel compelled to join the queues at petrol stations or push their way into packed supermarkets to chase down the last roll of Andrex. And I can take some degree of comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who feels that way. Fighting the urge to panic-buy isn’t easy… but it’s worth doing. In fact, it’s the only way to prevent more panic-buying in the long term. That and not buying any newspaper with a red top or clicking on a clickbait headline on a poorly-coded website.
I’m going to try hard to avoid succumbing and contributing to the panic. Hopefully the reward will be a government that pays attention and actually takes action to fix the systemic issues that got us to this point – but I won’t hold my breath for that. Until then, I think I’m going to take a break from the news and focus on happier things. Like re-watching yesterday’s episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Damn, that was a fine episode.
Some stock images courtesy of Unsplash and/or Pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I adore the beginning of September. As a kid I hated it, of course – the first week of September means back to school for kids in England – but with those years far behind me (too far, quite frankly) I’ve really come to appreciate what September brings. Even as a kid, September marked the beginning of the slow march to Christmas, and brought with it the end of the summer heatwaves and warm weather. As the leaves begin to turn shades of gold, orange, and red, autumn sets in and the weather cools. The nights start getting noticeably longer, and then before you know it it’s harvest time!
Autumn is, on balance, probably my favourite season. As much as I like seeing the beautiful frosts and snowfalls of winter, autumn has a sense of slowly-building anticipation that winter lacks; the hype before the main event. Just like the days leading up to Christmas are more enjoyable than Christmas Day itself, so too is autumn preferable to winter.
Don’t tell anyone, but Christmas is coming!
Though we don’t have Thanksgiving here in the UK like our American and Canadian friends, harvest time brings with it an abundance of many of my favourite dishes, like apple crumble – the perfect autumn dessert, if you ask me! As a kid we’d go bramble-picking, collecting the fruit you might also know as blackberries to make into desserts or jam. I tend to associate the autumn season with these kinds of fruity, sweet flavours – but you could just as easily add into the mix hearty stews or dishes like steak pie.
Apples – the quintessential autumn fruit.
As an aside, it was only when I moved away from the UK and met folks from other countries that I realised how British cuisine has acquired a truly awful reputation! It never occurred to me that it might be so looked down on by people from other parts of the world, especially because I grew up in a rural community where farm-fresh produce was often available. I can remember attending events celebrating cookery, where local chefs would show off the best (often very expensive) home-grown ingredients. There was even an apple festival that I went to once – around this time of year – which was great fun. And I still have a soft spot for cookery shows on television (or online) – many of which star British chefs cooking British food. But I digress!
Heat never used to be a big deal for me. I lived for a time in South Africa, on the KwaZulu-Natal coast, and summer was warm and humid there. Even when I lived in mainland Europe, temperatures were a lot warmer than they are here. Unfortunately though, as my health has gotten worse over the years I’ve found that my tolerance for heat has declined, and my idea of what makes for a comfortable temperature is now what a lot of folks would call “cold!” This means that I enjoy summer even less than I ever used to, so the beginning of September brings with it a sense of relief. Of course it’s still possible to get a heatwave or hot spell into September, but by and large we’re through what I consider the least-enjoyable part of the year.
Autumn is when the weather cools and the leaves turn beautiful shades of gold and orange.
From an entertainment point of view, September marks the beginning of the traditional television season – though of course such things are increasingly meaningless in an era of ten-episode seasons and on-demand streaming! But it was in September when many shows would premiere or kick off their new seasons – Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation both debuted in September, for example. Even today, with streaming becoming an ever-larger part of the home entertainment landscape, summer still sees fewer new shows and fewer video game releases than the autumn. Got to get those games out in time for Christmas, right?
When I worked in the city in an office – or rather, a succession of offices – September was usually a great time to take a break. Co-workers with kids would often want time off over the summer holidays, and would be grateful to us childless folks for not taking up too many vacation days during the weeks when schools were closed. So by the end of the summer most of them would come back to work, meaning it was my turn for some time off! Though I wouldn’t say this was a tradition I stuck to every year, it was certainly something I took advantage of for several Septembers.
A real harvest bounty!
For a variety of reasons I have positive associations with this time of year, some going all the way back to my early childhood memories of picking brambles in the hedgerows around the small village where I grew up. Or playing conkers! Do you remember that game? If you never got to play, as kids we’d pick conkers – the large woody seed of horse chestnut trees – and tie them to pieces of string. The game then involved two players swinging or flicking their conker at the other player’s – the surviving conker was declared the winner!
So as September begins, we mark the unofficial end of summer. My favourite time of year gets started, and we begin the slow march toward Christmas and New Year – which will be upon us sooner than we realise! I never like to wish away time; none of us really know how many months or seasons we’ve got left, so wishing for a particular time of year to rush by seems rather ghoulish. But every year I’m pleased to welcome September, which brings with it the beginning of my favourite season and favourite time of year. And today, I just wanted to take a moment away from the usual things I talk about here on the website to acknowledge that.
All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective owner, studio, broadcaster, etc. Some stock images courtesy of pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Today marks what would’ve been Gene Roddenberry’s 100th birthday, so it’s a good opportunity to pause and look back at the life and legacy of the man who created Star Trek – and changed science fiction forever.
Of course it’s true that we wouldn’t have Star Trek without Gene Roddenberry. But it’s very likely that Star Wars wouldn’t exist either, at least not in any form we’d recognise, and without either of those pioneers, countless other sci-fi and fantasy films and television shows would likely have never made it to the screen. Gene Roddenberry’s legacy extends far beyond the USS Enterprise, Captain Kirk, and the franchise he created that’s still going strong in its fifty-fifth year; he quite literally transformed science fiction and started the process of making it mainstream.
I never had the opportunity to meet Gene Roddenberry. In fact, by the time I settled in to regularly watch Star Trek: The Next Generation in the early 1990s, he’d already passed away. But his creation had a huge influence on my early life and adolescence, even though I only knew the man himself as merely one name among many in the end credits. Many people have spoken about the inspirational side of Star Trek, how the franchise depicts an idealistic future free from many of the problems and challenges our society has to deal with today. For me, that was – and remains – the appeal of Star Trek.
Gene Roddenberry (seated) with other members of the production and creative team behind The Next Generation.
Whole generations of people have grown up watching and loving Star Trek since Gene Roddenberry passed away. The fact that the franchise he created is still inspiring people to look to the stars – and to look to make changes for the better in the world today – a hundred years after he was born, and almost three decades since his death, is a phenomenal legacy for any one person to have. Untold numbers of people have been inspired by Star Trek to become scientists, doctors, engineers, astronauts, and even politicians, taking Gene Roddenberry’s philosophy and idealism for the future to every corner of our society. Star Trek may still be on the air, but Gene Roddenberry’s legacy has long since moved beyond the screen and into the real world.
As someone who never met Gene Roddenberry and only started watching Star Trek after he was already gone, I can’t comment on the man himself. I didn’t know him on a personal level, and I regret never having the opportunity to talk with him about the future and how our society and civilisation might evolve. But I can speak to how I perceive his legacy and how he affected the world, and though it might sound like a cliché, there are very few people who have had such a positive impact – both on my own life and in the wider world.
Gene Roddenberry with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley on the set of The Motion Picture.
Star Trek was always double-layered for Gene Roddenberry. There was the cool sci-fi stuff; the spaceships, phasers, transporters, and the like. He brought those to life using the best available television technologies and special effects, some of which would be adopted by other productions and become mainstays of the sci-fi genre. But there was also social commentary and a desire to show audiences that the way the world is today isn’t the way it always has to be.
At a time when racial segregation was still ongoing in the United States, and when the battle for civil rights and racial equality was still being fought, Gene Roddenberry put black and white characters together on an equal footing. At a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War, Gene Roddenberry put a Russian on the bridge of the Enterprise. And at a time when neurodivergent people were looked down on and mistreated, Gene Roddenberry created characters like Spock and Data, who present very differently to their peers but were nevertheless welcomed and accepted.
Gene Roddenberry created many wonderful and diverse characters.
Gene Roddenberry’s vision of Starfleet and the Federation was a space where everyone could feel welcome. Discrimination and hate didn’t exist in the 23rd or 24th Centuries as he saw it, and the way Star Trek depicted this vision of the future has been a force for good in the world.
On the practical side of things too, Gene Roddenberry’s legacy lives on. George Lucas has said on many occasions that Star Wars – arguably the biggest space-based entertainment property in the world – would not have come to exist without Star Trek and the trail it blazed. Countless other sci-fi and space-fantasy films, television shows, and even video games all owe a great deal to Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek. Though he didn’t invent the genre, Roddenberry expanded it in a big way. By creating one of the first connected fandoms, complete with meet-ups and conventions in which he and the show’s stars would happily participate, Roddenberry pioneered the concept of a fan community decades before the internet came along.
Jeffrey Hunter and Gene Roddenberry holding a model of the USS Enterprise during production of The Cage.
Later today, on what would’ve been Gene Roddenberry’s 100th birthday, a new episode of Star Trek will premiere. What would he have made of Lower Decks, the franchise’s first foray into comedy? Some folks who haven’t liked the direction that the franchise has taken in recent years might say he’d have disliked the concept, but actually Roddenberry had plans for a Star Trek comedy himself. Perhaps the most famous concept would’ve focused on Lwaxana Troi as a spin-off from The Next Generation, but he had many other ideas for Star Trek projects – including comedies – going all the way back to the 1970s.
A number of people involved in the production of Star Trek have noted how Gene Roddenberry was acutely aware of how audience expectations changed over time. One of the main reasons why his television project Star Trek: Phase II was reworked into The Motion Picture was because he’d seen the success of Star Wars in 1977 and how well audiences had responded to it. Though he may not have liked every single creative decision taken by the franchise over the years, he would at the very least understand that audiences have changed and that Star Trek has to change too. Whether he’d approve of every joke and character in Lower Decks or Discovery is thus a moot point; I think Gene Roddenberry would have understood and been supportive of the concept and of taking Star Trek to new places.
So that’s about all I have to say today, really. Though I never met him, Gene Roddenberry has had an ongoing influence on my life. As a Trekkie, I revel in the world that he created, the characters he brought to life, and the wonderfully optimistic vision of a future free from the kind of social ills that plague the world today. I believe, as he did, that the human race is capable of getting to that point. He encouraged all of us to reach for the stars – and to strive to build a better world. That legacy continues to this day – and I hope it will always be there.
The Star Trek franchise – including all properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. Some behind-the-scenes photos courtesy of TrekCore. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I’ve found it difficult to know what to say about the Activision Blizzard scandal, and how to cover the story in a way that’s appropriate in style and tone. It goes without saying that what happened at Activision Blizzard, as well as the company’s pathetic reaction to it, is incredibly serious, but I feel that a lot of the commentary and discussion around the scandal, even from well-established critics and publications, missed the mark.
To briefly recap what’s been going on in case you didn’t know, Activision Blizzard has been sued by the state of California in the United States for violating the rights of female (and other) employees. Activision Blizzard is accused of fostering a culture of sexual harassment and discrimination that is so intense that at least one employee is believed to have committed suicide following an extended period of harassment. The lawsuit is ongoing and unresolved at time of writing, but Activision Blizzard has acknowledged that there are “issues” with its corporate culture, and at least one senior executive has now resigned. Activision Blizzard employees also staged a walkout in response to the company’s handling of the scandal.
Some outlets have referred to this as a “frat boy” culture (a reference to the loutish, sexually aggressive behaviour of some college fraternities in the United States), but I don’t think that term comes close to describing what’s alleged to have happened at Activision Blizzard. Nor does it do justice to the severity of the accusations.
Sexual harassment is said to be rife at Activision Blizzard.
Other reports have suggested that this kind of sexual harassment is a problem that plagues the games industry as a whole. I agree, though I’d also add that this kind of behaviour can happen at any kind of company in any industry; it’s an industry problem, not specifically a games industry one. Tackling institutional or systemic misogyny and sexual harassment in the workplace is clearly an ongoing struggle, particularly in the United States and other parts of the world where workers’ rights are not as well-protected as they are in parts of Europe, for example.
I used to work in the games industry. I spent several years with a large games company based in Germany, and as a freelancer I worked with about a dozen small and large games companies in the years after I left my position at that company. I was fortunate that, in the decade or so I spent working in the industry, I never saw or experienced harassment or bullying of that nature. But as I often say, one person’s experience is not a complete worldview, and the fact that I didn’t see sexual harassment first-hand during the years I worked in the industry doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
Activision Blizzard has this statement on their website – quite unironically, it seems.
In recent years we’ve learned a lot more than ever before about abusive management practices and “corporate cultures” at large video games companies. Rockstar is just one of many companies that have been called out for their awful practices during “crunch” times – and crunch is something I definitely saw and experienced first-hand during my time working in the industry. Other companies like CD Projekt Red and even the sainted Nintendo have been criticised for this as well. Then there was Ubisoft, a company which faced comparable accusations of sexual harassment – and worse – to Activision Blizzard.
All of these cases – and many more besides – follow a pattern which is all too familiar in the days of 24/7 rolling news and social media outrage mobs: the story blows up, has its five minutes in the spotlight, then disappears. News of the Ubisoft scandal broke barely a year ago, yet practically no outlets, publications, or even independent commentators have so much as mentioned it for months. New Ubisoft games like Watch Dogs: Legion, Immortals Fenyx Rising, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla have all been released since the scandal, and what happened? Practically all of the outlets and critics who went hell-for-leather against Ubisoft for all of five minutes forgot the scandal and reviewed their latest games – often giving them glowing recommendations. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has an average score from professional critics of 80/100 on Metacritic, for example.
A similar scandal involving Ubisoft doesn’t appear to have harmed its recent games.
So we come to the Activision Blizzard scandal itself. The reaction from amateur and professional commentators alike was unanimous – the company is to be condemned for not only allowing this behaviour, but rewarding those involved and covering for senior managers and executives. And that is a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, not that it should even need to be said. Practically everyone who hears about what’s been going on at Activision Blizzard will have felt that such behaviour is unacceptable – and potentially criminal, as the lawsuit alleges. Those instincts are spot on, and I don’t disagree in the slightest.
But then I started to hear some very familiar statements and promises, accompanied by the same semi-hysterical language and, in some cases, blatant over-acting on podcasts and videos by folks trying to channel their original instinctive outrage into clicks, views, and advertising revenue. Critics and publications began inserting themselves into the story. Articles and columns weren’t about Activision Blizzard so much as they were about the writers and critics themselves, and how the scandal made them feel.
Some of this is unavoidable; when people are paid to discuss a big news story, how they feel about the story often creeps into even the most well-intentioned journalism. But in this case a lot of folks seemed to go way beyond that, promising their audiences that they will “boycott” future Activision Blizzard releases and discussing at length their own feelings and opinions on the subject. Many of these stories ceased to be about Activision Blizzard and became a “look at me” kind of thing, with publications and critics using the backdrop of the scandal to score attention, clicks, and money for themselves.
A visual metaphor.
This happens a lot on social media, where scandals and news stories are often less about the events themselves and more about the people discussing them. The term “virtue signalling” is often used to derisively critique people who feign outrage or interest in a story while it’s popular, and there seemed to be an awful lot of virtue signalling coming from professional and amateur commentators as news of the Activision Blizzard scandal was breaking.
Having been down this road before, both with companies that saw comparable scandals and with other companies that received justified or unjustified criticism, let me say this: the vast majority of the folks promising to “boycott” future Activision Blizzard titles will do nothing of the sort. A small minority may stick to their guns beyond the next few weeks and months, but eventually critics and publications will return to the company. Activision Blizzard has big releases planned, including the next Call of Duty title, a remaster of Diablo II, and the long-awaited Diablo IV. Not to mention that the company manages hugely popular online titles like Overwatch and World of Warcraft. I simply don’t believe that most of the people who’ve jumped on this story and criticised the company in such a public way will be able to resist the temptation of talking about some of these titles – particularly if hype and excitement grows, as it may for the likes of Diablo IV.
I’m pretty sure that a lot of critics and commentators will be back for Diablo IV, regardless of what they may have said about Activision Blizzard in the last few days.
We’ve been here too many times for me to have any confidence in people sticking to any promises or commitments that they may have made in the heat of a (scripted and well-planned) rant to camera about Activision Blizzard. Not only that, but the backlash a publication or critic can expect to receive for reneging on such a promise is basically non-existent. They might get a few comments calling them out for going back on their word, but that’s all. If history is any guide, most readers or viewers won’t even remember the Activision Blizzard scandal in a few weeks’ time, let alone be willing to hold a publication or critic to account for failing to live up to a commitment not to cover their future releases.
As the news of the scandal was breaking and I saw the increasingly manufactured outrage from professionals and amateurs unfolding, I felt there was no way to cover the story without getting sucked into all of this. I don’t like my website to be a space for negativity, so I haven’t talked about the Activision Blizzard scandal until now.
Trying to step back from the quagmire surrounding the story and address it head-on is a challenge, but here we go. There needs to be a complete overhaul of Activision Blizzard from the top down. Senior executives and managers need to be investigated to see what they knew and whether or to what extent they were complicit in the behaviour or in covering it up. The company needs to make real changes to the way it deals with its employees, and there needs to be some way of enforcing that and holding the company to that commitment. If those things can’t happen, the only other option is for the company to disband and be shut down.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick.
In 2021 it’s so incredibly depressing that we’re still dealing with sexual harassment of women in the workplace. It feels like the kind of story that should’ve been dealt with fifty years ago or more, and the fact that this kind of behaviour can still happen, and happen so openly at a large company, is unacceptable and deserves all of the criticism it gets – and more.
But at the same time, much of the criticism that I’ve seen smacked of the kind of soft-touch, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it coverage that has been all too common in recent years. And I note echoes of similar scandals at other large companies in the video games industry that have all but disappeared despite no senior managers or executives even being fired, let alone prosecuted for their actions.
The even more depressing truth is that I expect the vast majority of critics and players to drift back to Activision Blizzard in the weeks and months ahead, regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit and regardless of whether any substantial changes are actually made at the company. Activision Blizzard will try to get away with doing the bare minimum, making superficial changes and perhaps finding a scapegoat or two to fire in public. The company will then likely spend a lot of money on a marketing blitz for upcoming titles, wooing critics with everything they can muster.
A new Call of Duty game is scheduled to be released this year.
I could be wrong, and this could be the first time a company actually sees long-lasting consequences from its customers. But I doubt it. The sad truth is that most people don’t care. They want to be left alone to play Overwatch or Call of Duty, and even if they joined in the discussion and said they’d never buy another Activision Blizzard game again, chances are it’s only a matter of months before they go back on that and quietly pick up Diablo IV or whatever game they get excited about after seeing a slick, expensive marketing campaign. The same goes for publications and professional critics. Having made hay with their righteous indignation at the company’s behaviour, they’ll go right back to reviewing their games and publishing lists of “the ten worst Call of Duty levels ever!!!” because they know hardly anyone will remember or even notice their empty words and hollow promises.
As for me, I’m not making any such commitment. I don’t play games like Call of Duty, and I can count on one finger the number of Activision Blizzard’s upcoming games I was even vaguely interested in. I’ll do my best to keep tabs on this story as the lawsuit and the fallout from it rumbles on, but I think the ending will be depressingly familiar. Activision Blizzard will bring in people to manage the “optics” of the scandal, they’ll do the bare minimum to convince people they’re taking it seriously, and sooner rather than later it’ll drop off the radar entirely. The company will lay low for a while, then return with their latest game – and most folks will have forgotten all about it. That’s what happened with Ubisoft, with Rockstar’s crunch scandal, and many, many others. Despite the way people have reacted to Activision Blizzard in recent days, I’ve seen nothing that makes me think this scandal will play out any differently.
This is why it’s been so difficult to know what to say about the Activision Blizzard scandal. It’s such a serious story that it deserves to be covered extensively, but at the same time the manufactured outrage and over-acting has been cringeworthy to watch and listen to in some quarters. I’m not calling out any one individual critic or commentator for their coverage, but as a general point this is how I feel about it. It’s been interesting to see the story hit the mainstream press, but even then it barely lasted a day before dropping out of the headlines. Activision Blizzard will try to ride this out, and for my two cents, I think most players and publications are going to let them, just as they let other companies survive their respective scandals.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective publisher, developer, etc. Some stock images courtesy of Pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I avoided covering the rumours and so-called leaks a few weeks ago, but it turns out that Windows 11 really does exist and will begin being rolled out later this year or early next year. I was surprised to hear that Microsoft planned to release a whole new operating system so soon after Windows 10’s 2015 launch; Windows 10 was billed as the “final” version, with the prospect of updates and tweaks but no replacement. A mere six years later – or fewer, assuming that the new OS has been in development for a while – and Microsoft is ready to abandon that pledge.
Windows 10 is far from perfect. It’s an improvement over past versions of the operating system, of course, but it has its problems. For me, though, the worst thing about Windows 10 has been Microsoft’s lack of care. Bugs and issues which were reported to Microsoft more than five years ago – such as 4K displays not being able to use extra large icons – are still in the OS and it seems Microsoft just opted to ignore them.
Windows 11 is coming. Prepare yourself!
An update to Windows has been needed for a while, not just to address some of these bugs but to give the whole OS a bit of a refresh. But does it need to be a completely new operating system? Though Windows remains dominant across the PC space, a lot of people were initially sold on the upgrade to Windows 10 based on the promise that it would be the final version of the OS. Windows 10 had a solid launch because people were keen to upgrade from Windows 7 and Windows 8 on that basis – something that was helped by the upgrade being free at first.
To abandon that promise so soon after making it is going to sour at least some people on Windows 11 – even more so if the new upgrade won’t be free. I can’t find any information on that, by the way, so watch this space. Windows 10 has, over the course of the last few years, come to eclipse Windows 7 and 8 as the most-used operating system around the world, and with a renewed growth in the PC market partly thanks to lockdowns and working from home, I would have argued that Windows 10 is well-placed to ensure Microsoft’s continued dominance of the PC space going forward.
An example of a Windows 11 desktop.
Windows 10 will be Windows 11’s main competitor, at least in the first few months and even years of the new OS’ life. Apple Mac is its own walled garden, and Linux, despite some attempts to make “user-friendly” versions, is still a niche, enthusiast product. So Windows as a whole has no major competition in the PC realm – but Windows 11 will have to stand up against Windows 10, an OS with a built-in userbase that numbers in the billions.
Windows 11 will have to strike the right balance between offering improvements and changes but without being so different as to discourage users familiar with the basic Windows interface. Moving the Start button to the centre of the taskbar instead of leaving it in its familiar left-hand position is one of those dumb aesthetic things that’s likely to prove costly. Windows isn’t Mac, and shouldn’t try to imitate everything Apple does. Folks need familiarity, especially considering the prevalence of Windows in the business world, where many users aren’t as tech-savvy and just want something that they know how to use.
Does Windows need to copy Mac?
If Windows 11 can smooth some of the rougher edges of Windows 10, perhaps it will see success. And in the longer term, unless we get a repeat of the Vista problem followed in short order by another upgrade, I think Windows 11 will, simply by default, gradually roll out to more and more devices. As noted above, there simply isn’t a viable alternative for most PC users.
There are some concerning elements, though. I mentioned Vista, and that greatly-disliked operating system brought some elements to Windows that seem superficially similar to Windows 11. Widgets for the taskbar and desktop are the most notable. And from Windows 8, which was also considered a major disappointment, Windows 11 is bringing back the “multi-device” design, with the new OS supposedly being able to work on phones, tablets, touch-screens, and laptops as well as PCs.
Gaming was mentioned as part of Microsoft’s Windows 11 presentation.
One thing Windows 10 got absolutely right was its return to a focus on PC and standard keyboard and mouse input devices. I’m not convinced that enough people want a Windows 11 tablet or laptop to make building the entire OS around that concept worthwhile. Doing so risks making the desktop PC experience worse for users – and considering 99% of folks who use Windows do so on a desktop PC or laptop, that’s a mistake Microsoft can’t afford to repeat.
All that being said, I’ll give Windows 11 a shot when it’s ready. I like to stay up-to-date, and the newest version of Windows is an inevitability for someone who uses a PC daily. Might as well get in at the ground floor and start getting used to things – that’s been the attitude I had with every version of Windows since I first owned a Windows 95 PC!
I’ve been using Windows for a while now…
One point to note is that Microsoft’s current policy is to continue to support Windows 10 “through October 14, 2025.” That’s a scant four years away, and if it should happen that support for Windows 10 ends on that date, as Microsoft seems to be implying, then everyone will need to upgrade to Windows 11 at that time. If there’s a free upgrade offered for a limited time, as there was with Windows 10, it would make sense in my opinion to take it.
Despite lofty promises in 2015 about kids being able to grow up with the ever-present, unchanging Windows 10, six years later Microsoft is ready to ditch it in favour of a new operating system. It looks to offer some superficial visual changes, and while I’m hopeful it’ll fix some of the problems with 4K displays that Windows 10 has suffered from I don’t know that for sure. It feels unnecessary, but as Microsoft is utterly dominant in the PC realm, anyone with a Windows machine should think seriously about taking the upgrade when it rolls out in the months ahead.
When the official Windows 11 upgrade or launch happens, I hope you’ll check back for my full thoughts on the latest version of the operating system. Until then, all that’s left to say is I hope it’s a success along the lines of Windows XP, and not a disappointment like Windows 8 or, god forbid, Windows Vista.
Windows 11 is being released in late 2021 or early 2022 by Microsoft. Windows 11, Windows 10, and all other properties mentioned above are the copyright of Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Headlines have been made around the world in recent weeks about an official United States government investigation into UFOs; “unidentified flying objects.” It seems from news reporting as though the existence of alien visitors, which has been denied for decades by successive American governments, is about to be revealed to the public. A handful of images and even videos from official United States military sources have also come out, seemingly showing unknown objects moving through the sky.
But let’s slow down and try to put our critical thinking hats on for just a moment. What have we actually been shown? Beyond the headlines screaming about alien spaceships, what have we really seen in these photos and videos, and could there be an alternative, far more boring explanation?
Have we really seen alien spacecraft?
If you’ve ever studied philosophy, or even read articles on some pop-science websites, you might know what Occam’s razor is. Also known as the law of parsimony, in short the razor says that, when confronted with multiple hypotheses or potential explanations for an unknown event or phenomenon, the one with the fewest or smallest assumptions is preferable and most likely to be correct. To put it another way: the simplest explanation is the most likely.
So what is the simplest explanation for these UFO pictures and videos?
One thing we don’t have are any photographs or live video recordings. The clips and images shown off are all radar, infrared, and images put together from other scans and sensors. A computer takes the information taken in by the lens or scanner and translates it into a visual image. These are not “images” from a “camera” in the usual sense of either term.
It isn’t clear what this image represents.
When dealing with any technology, there’s scope for things to go wrong. An infrared sensor attached to a fast-moving aircraft could misinterpret something close as being far away, or something moving relatively slowly as moving quickly. Changes in the aircraft’s speed and position mean the sensor has to move and adjust its trajectory to keep track of an object, and this can make it appear as though the object is moving unnaturally.
There are many different objects that could be detected by a sensor, infrared scanner, and other sensitive equipment that would be far more likely than an alien spaceship. Balloons have been suggested in the past as one such example, and there are myriad others from reflections and clouds to other aircraft. There’s also the prospect of newly developed technology – either domestic (i.e. American) or foreign – some of these aircraft could be Russian or Chinese spyplanes or drones, for example. Even if we can’t account for every UFO by saying there’s a bug in the code or a problem with sensors or onboard computers, everyday phenomena are still more plausible explanations than alien spacecraft.
The F-117 “Nighthawk” stealth aircraft was developed in secret and is designed to be difficult to detect.
I’m not sure how I feel about aliens. On the one hand, it seems rational to imagine that alien life exists given the size of the observable universe and the consistent detection of exoplanets around practically every observed star. On the other, the lack of concrete proof of their existence, at least in our galactic neighbourhood, could mean that intelligent alien life is exceptionally rare. This is commonly known as the Fermi paradox; the absence of alien life in a universe that can support it.
But if intelligent alien life did exist, is this the way we would expect to detect it?
UFOs have been reported for decades, so if even 1% of the UFO sightings and reports are genuinely of alien origin, what have they been doing all this time? Obviously they don’t intend to contact us or make their presence widely known or they’d have done so by now. Any alien race that’s advanced enough to build interstellar or even interplanetary spacecraft is far superior in technological terms to humanity, and with their knowledge they’d be more than capable of announcing their presence to the world, conquering the world, or doing whatever else they might want to do. The fact that they haven’t is a significant hurdle for alien believers and advocates to surmount.
Another grainy and unclear still frame from one of the UFO report videos.
Then we come to a pretty big question: what’s the point? If an alien race is capable of travelling to the stars, why come to Earth and fly around in our atmosphere? What possible purpose could that serve? It can’t be for any kind of observation; even humans don’t need to fly at 30,000 feet to perform observations of things on the ground. Our satellites, even commercial ones like those used for services like Google Earth, are more than capable of performing accurate scans of the surface of our planet. If aliens existed and wished to observe us, they could do so at a great distance without us ever knowing.
And speaking of “without us ever knowing,” were these aliens careless or did they allow themselves to be detected? If they wanted to make their presence known, this is not a rational way to accomplish that goal. Nor is it particularly threatening or intimidating. If aliens wanted to let the peoples of Earth know that they were here, they could land in the middle of a big city and announce themselves. And if they’re possessing such technology as to be able to travel to the stars, would they really be so dumb as to allow a primitive human to catch them with an infrared sensor or a night-vision camera? I doubt it.
A third UFO as seen from the USS Russell.
The U in “UFO” stands for “unidentified.” By definition, that means we don’t know what these objects are; they were not able to be identified in the short span of time that the various pilots and military personnel spent in the vicinity. That could mean we’re dealing with alien spacecraft, but it also seems very likely that we aren’t. This is not the coup that tabloid headlines and the tin foil hat brigade want it to be. The United States government has admitted that it has detected a handful of objects that it can’t identify. Given the size of the US military, the number of daily flights undertaken, and the increasing reliance on technology, sensors, and computers – all of which are subject to glitches, issues, and even misinterpretations – it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched that they’d occasionally spot something that they couldn’t immediately identify.
I like science fiction, and there have been some wonderful depictions of aliens and extra-terrestrial worlds over the years. But we can’t let our wishes and our fantasies guide the real world, and the fact remains that no matter how much we might want to believe in aliens, there still isn’t any proof. When making an argument and building a case, you can’t just slap down any old explanation into the gaps in our knowledge and cry “gotcha!” as if that’s the end of the matter. That’s the classic “god of the gaps” argument that many religious people often make; “you can’t explain X, therefore god.” In this case, some people seem to be making an “alien of the gaps” argument, proclaiming that, because the US military has been unable to identify something, it must be an alien spaceship. That’s simply not a valid argument.
The United States military (Pentagon HQ pictured) is investigating these incidents and will soon release a report.
So I’m sorry to pour cold water on this story. Maybe some of these UFO encounters are genuinely down to alien visitors, but until there’s more proof than a grainy non-image from a sensor made by the lowest-bidding military contractor, I’ll remain sceptical. The discovery of intelligent extra-terrestrial life would be the single biggest scientific achievement of the century, and has the potential to radically change many aspects of human life. Given the scope of such an important moment, we need to be absolutely sure of what we’re dealing with, and this set of unknowns may be circumstantial evidence in its favour, but it’s a long, long way away from being conclusive. It’s possible that “they” are hiding things from the public or not revealing everything they know, but unfalsifiable conspiracy theories and a lack of evidence to the contrary do not make for a valid argument and do not come close to constituting proof.
It’s possible that one day we’ll discover more about extra-terrestrial life. It seems almost certain, for example, that microbial life and bacteria once existed on Mars. But aliens in UFOs flying over United States airspace (and seemingly no other country’s)? As long as these items remain unexplained, aliens are always a possibility. But on a ranked list of all the possible explanations, they have to be at or very near the bottom. So despite all of the excitement, these images and video clips, and the impending government report about them, don’t come close to proving the existence of alien spacecraft. Sorry!
The United States government will soon release a report into “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Some stock photos courtesy of Unsplash and Pixabay. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
This subject is pretty far outside of my usual wheelhouse here on the website, but it’s something that the past year has highlighted and I feel it’s important. For a little background, about ten years ago I got really into survivalism – you know, the whole “doomsday is coming, let’s stockpile and plan” thing that you might be familiar with from television series like Doomsday Preppers. Partly this was because I was pretty unwell at the time, going through some tough mental health issues, and one way I found to deal with my anxieties and other issues was to make intricate plans for all kinds of highly unlikely scenarios… like worldwide pandemics!
The coronavirus pandemic caught many people entirely off-guard and unprepared. Here in the UK, they say that the average household only has enough food, water, medicines, and other basic necessities to last three or four days without running into major problems, and while the pandemic has brought this into focus for a lot of people, particularly in the early days when shortages of things like toilet paper threatened to become a big issue, there are still many folks who haven’t taken any steps to get themselves better prepared to ride out an emergency.
A flood is just one of many emergency scenarios that could happen.
A global pandemic or the zombie apocalypse aren’t the only things to be concerned about, and there are many smaller-scale but far more likely events that make having the kind of basic emergency kit we’re going to look at today a sound and practical investment. Local weather events like windstorms or flooding are relatively common in the UK and around the world, and while the damage they cause is not usually extreme, when a major storm is raging simply going out to the shops – or ordering anything for delivery – can be difficult or impossible. Then there are personal-scale events: something like contracting the flu (or coronavirus) can mean days or a week stuck at home unable to get out or do much, and a basic emergency kit can even come in handy if you experience financial issues or things like identity theft. Such things are manageable and are usually resolved within days, but having no access to money or credit cards can become a major headache in the short term if you don’t have the basics at home to tide you over.
So this time we’re going to work on building a basic two-week emergency kit. Obviously the kit I’m showing you today is based around items that are easily accessible here in the UK and that make sense for the kinds of emergencies that are plausible in this neck of the woods. Your emergency kit should be adapted to the needs of your local area; there’s no point in buying heavy winter clothes, for example, if you live in a tropical area that’s warm year-round!
Though we aren’t necessarily talking about the zombie apocalypse, if that inspires you to get prepared then that’s great!
Though I should caveat this by saying that I’m not an expert and make no guarantees about emergency survival, the items we’re going to talk about have done well for me over the years and I wouldn’t want to be without them. Having even a very small kit designed to last 3-4 days already gives you a significant boost ahead of 90% of the population who have made no such efforts, and considering that many of the items we’re going to look at are relatively inexpensive, to me having something like this makes a lot of sense.
So let’s get started and build up a basic two-week emergency kit.
Number 1: Extra medication
I have to take a cocktail of different medications every day as a result of the various conditions and health issues I suffer from. If you or someone in your household are in the same boat, having extra medication on hand is going to be important. You can have all the food, water, and other supplies you want, but if you need to take daily medication and you don’t have enough, your emergency kit can’t be considered complete.
The most important thing to say is to never skip doses to try to build up a stockpile. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist and explain that you need a little extra; or else try collecting your prescription early so you’re never going down to the wire. Remember that medication, like food, has a shelf life, so you should always be taking medication and not squirreling it away for later.
I have a repeat prescription which I collect every four weeks. What I started doing was picking it up a few days early every time, and by now I’ve never got less than a two-week supply on hand. In the worst case you could always come up with a “little white lie” and tell your pharmacist that you’re going to be out of town and unable to collect your prescription for a couple of weeks so you need extra!
Number 2: Food
If you read a lot of blogs or even books by self-proclaimed “preppers,” you’ll often see things like rice, pasta, and flour talked about as things to keep and store. There is a role for dry foodstuffs like that, and having things like rice on hand is no bad thing. However, one thing that concerns me with the approach of basing one’s food supply around these dry items is that they all use a lot of water to prepare and cook. Rice, if stored correctly, keeps for a very long time, but it also requires twice its volume in water to cook; one cup of rice needs two cups of water.
Some emergency events can damage water pipes, treatment plants, and pumps, meaning the water supply system is not something that can always be relied upon; it takes a lot of effort and maintenance at the best of times to keep clean water coming out of the tap. If someone’s food supply is entirely dependent on dried foods like rice and pasta that need large volumes of water for preparation, that cuts into their supply of water for other basic needs, not least drinking. So while there’s a place for dried foods, especially if you get into “hardcore” prepping and go down that rabbit hole, if we’re looking at a basic emergency kit I’m going to advocate keeping that to a bare minimum.
In this case, tins (cans) and packets are your friend. Look for things like potatoes, pasta in sauce, vegetables, soups, and fruits. These are things which, generally speaking, have a shelf life at room temperature of several years, and crucially, they can be opened and eaten without wasting any water on preparation. Many tinned foods are designed to be heated, but even those are usually pre-prepared or pre-cooked; it’s uncommon to get raw food in a tin that’s inedible without extensive preparation.
So how many tins of food are we talking about? For an adult, you can get away with two tins per day – according to some online sources – but I like to figure that if we’re going to stick to three meals a day, each meal can be approximately one tin. Tins vary in size, and it will depend on the contents and calories, but this is a good general rule.
If we say one adult is going to consume three tins of food per day for fourteen days, we’re talking about 42 tins per adult. Children could perhaps consume two tins per day, so two tins times fourteen days gives us 28 tins per child. These are very rough guidelines, and you should consider it for yourself.
A variety of different foodstuffs is a good idea, not least in case of spoilage! If you buy a job lot of 200 tins of potatoes, they could all spoil at once if you’re unlucky. Or you could get incredibly bored of eating the same thing every day! A mix of different items is the best bet. And whatever you do, don’t forget to have at least one tin opener! All those tins of food are useless if you can’t safely open them. Considering how important your food supply is, I recommend having at least two tin openers so you always have a backup.
While we’re on the subject of food, don’t think that everything you keep in your emergency kit has to be purely nutritious and functional. Emergency situations can be incredibly stressful, and for a lot of people having a treat like a piece of chocolate or candy can be helpful. Your emergency kit shouldn’t only consist of candy bars, of course, but there’s incredible value in such things from a psychological perspective, so my emergency kit contains some milk chocolate, as well as packets of hot chocolate mix, expressly for that reason.
One final note about food: your emergency kit should consist of things you enjoy eating, or at least can put up with. If you hate green beans, for example, why would you keep tins of green beans in your emergency kit? As noted above, psychological factors come into play in emergencies in ways we won’t necessarily expect, and if the only thing to eat is something you hate, that’s going to have an impact on your state of mind. So the best advice when it comes to food is find shelf-stable, long-life versions of things that you know you at least tolerate eating, if not enjoy.
Number 3: A power brick/battery backup
Battery banks, power bricks, or whatever terminology you use can be incredibly useful in a situation where mains electricity is out. The average mobile phone these days might last 24 hours on a full charge; 36 if you’re lucky, and the length of use per charge decreases over time. If the emergency situation you’re in sees power outages that last for days, you’ll need a way to charge your phone.
These backup power supplies can handle several complete phone charges – so long as you remember to keep the battery itself charged! – and are incredibly useful. In an emergency situation, getting information and communicating with loved ones are both going to be vital, and with phones being the primary way folks keep in touch these days, having a way to stay charged even if the power goes out is important. That said, it’s worth having a backup “offline” copy of important telephone numbers – in case you need to contact a loved one and your phone isn’t working. Write these numbers down and keep them with other supplies in your kit.
These backup power supplies can power many USB devices, and while mine is primarily a backup for my phone, having that facility could be useful for all kinds of things. A small LED light can be powered by USB, for example, or a fan.
Number 4: Lighting
Unless you live in a rural area or have lived through a major blackout, I think it’s not unfair to say that a lot of folks don’t really appreciate just how dark it can get when there’s no street lighting or other ambient light outside. If the power goes out in a major way, you can’t rely on any kind of electric lighting, including street lighting, to illuminate your home or the surrounding area after nightfall.
Where I live, in the dead of winter nightfall comes very early – the sun sets around 4pm in mid-December – and for around five months of the year we’re dealing with at least as much darkness as daylight. Autumn and winter are also the seasons where extreme weather is more likely. For all of those reasons and more, having a source of illumination that doesn’t rely on electricity is a worthy investment.
Though torches (flashlights) are useful and a good one is definitely a fine addition to an emergency kit, if we’re talking about building up a kit that can sustain you for two weeks, battery life becomes an issue. Many torches on the market today come with a built-in rechargeable battery, which in my experience tend not to last as long as regular disposable batteries. Under normal circumstances that would be fine, but if the power is out for days on end, that battery is going to run down.
Candles are inexpensive, especially if you buy a bulk pack, and as long as you’re careful with them they provide perfectly adequate illumination, especially if you use several at once. If you do decide to add candles to your emergency kit, remember you’ll also need a way to light them! Safety matches are by far the best option, but you can also get a lighter or something like that if you prefer. It can be a good idea to store matches and other fire-lighters in a waterproof bag or container.
Number 5: Heating and cooling
Depending on where you live, you might need to add a way to keep warm or a way to keep cool to your emergency kit. If your home’s central heating or air conditioning isn’t working, the additional stress of being too hot or too cold can make an already-difficult situation worse, so this isn’t something to overlook.
Anything to do with heating tends to involve fire or burning, so make sure that any fuel you keep around is properly and safely stored! If you have a fireplace with a chimney, you’re probably good to go as long as it’s clean and useable and you have wood or coal to burn. The rest of us will have to make do with things like butane-fuelled heaters. Look for anything called a camping heater or greenhouse warmer; get a good quality one and make sure to read the instructions and get the right fuel. Small kerosene heaters are a good option, and kerosene has a long shelf life.
On a smaller scale, getting a collection of warm blankets, good winter coats, gloves, and other cold-weather gear is going to be helpful as well. You can also invest in a pack of those disposable hand warmers! Emergency foil blankets don’t take up much space and can also help keep you warm in a crisis.
For cooling, you’re basically limited to fans as air conditioning isn’t something that can be easily simulated without power! However, it’s also worth getting spray bottles which can be filled with water; some people find that helpful in keeping cool – though it’s not my favourite method! A battery-powered fan (often sold as a travel fan or camping fan) is a worthwhile investment – just make sure to keep extra batteries on hand.
Number 6: Water
Water is perhaps the most important thing to consider when preparing an emergency kit. Many people can survive even a couple of weeks without food, but with no access to clean drinking water you can become very ill in hours. As above, we have to assume that, in the worst-case scenario, water will either not be coming out of the tap or the water that does won’t be potable.
Bottled water is your friend here – as long as you have the space for it. According to the NHS and other health bodies, men need anywhere from 3-4 litres of water per day, and women need 2-3 litres per day. Here in the UK, bottled water can be bought in 2l bottles, so for me on my own for a fourteen day survival kit I’d want to have 28 2l bottles – two bottles per day times fourteen days. You can do similar maths for your household!
You can get larger drums of water, like the big five-gallon (19l) ones designed for water coolers. They may be more cost-efficient, but you have to consider ease of use. Can you effectively carry such a large container and access the water inside without spilling? In my opinion the 2l bottles are a good middle ground, and as they’re easily accessible and relatively inexpensive that’s my preference.
Water is heavy. When considering storage, you need to keep in mind that weight can be an issue. In my case, if I want to store 28 2l bottles for my fourteen-day kit, those bottles have a combined weight of around 56kg (over 100lbs). If you store your water on shelves, you’ll have to make sure the shelves can take the weight. Likewise if you’re on an upper floor like an apartment or storing your water in an upstairs room or attic. The last thing you need is for your emergency kit to cause damage to your home – or even a flood!
Bottled water has a shelf life. The shelf life is important to keep in mind, because water stored in plastic bottles eventually becomes contaminated with molecules from the plastic which can be harmful. Like with your food, medication, fuel, and everything else in your kit, you can’t just buy up a bunch of water bottles and leave them sitting around forever. Eventually you’ll need to cycle through the bottles and replace them – though bottled water usually has a shelf life of at least a couple of years. But it’s something to always keep in mind.
Some folks advocate having a rainwater collection system, but this is something to only consider if you really know what you’re doing and you know how to get potable water at the end of the process. Making yourself sick because you tried to drink rainwater that had ran through your gutters and drainpipes will make your emergency a lot worse! However, if you don’t have the space for two weeks’ worth of water, something like this could be useful – but you really need to work at it to make sure you know what you’re doing.
Water purification tablets are relatively inexpensive – again, look to camping supply shops for this kind of thing. As always, read the instructions so you know when they can and can’t be used, but having some around won’t take up a lot of space and could be a lifesaver.
Number 7: First aid
You don’t need to go crazy and stockpile enough medical supplies for a small hospital, but a decent first aid kit should be part of your emergency kit. Websites like Amazon sell pre-prepared first aid kits designed to be kept in your car, and larger ones for workplaces. These can be a good place to start, but in my experience they often need to be augmented with a few extras – and better-quality items like tweezers and scissors than these kits typically provide.
A basic first aid kit should have: plasters (a.k.a. elastoplast or band-aids) in a variety of sizes, sterile gauze dressings, eye dressings, at least one roll of cloth/linen bandages, tweezers, scissors, medical tape, a thermometer, safety pins, disposable gloves (in the correct size), cleaning wipes, rash cream, basic painkillers (paracetamol, ibuprofen, and/or aspirin), antihistamines, distilled water (for cleaning injuries), antiseptic wipes and cream, hand sanitiser, face masks, and anti-diarrhoea medicine.
Most importantly you’ll also need a first aid manual or guide book – the items you have aren’t going to be a lot of use if you don’t know how to use them correctly! I have a first aid manual published by a charity called St. John’s Ambulance, and it’s detailed while being easy enough to understand. If you can’t take a proper first aid course, having a good book is the next best thing.
It’s also worth looking up some of the basics ahead of time. For example, do you know how to perform CPR? There are classes you can take in CPR, basic first aid, and the like that will all impart useful skills – and even websites like YouTube offer tutorials that are better than nothing. In an emergency situation, it’s possible that the emergency services will be very busy, overwhelmed, or even unable to access your location for a time. Knowing the basics – and having access to the right supplies – could quite literally save life and limb.
Number 8: Supplies for babies, children, and/or pets
You’ve thought through your own food supply – but what about your furry and feathered friends? If we’re building a two-week emergency kit, you’ll also need two weeks’ worth of food and other pet supplies. Same goes for babies and children: do you have enough nappies (diapers) and changing supplies, as well as baby formula, food, etc?
If your children are growing up fast, make sure you’re regularly updating their part of the emergency kit. Having two weeks’ worth of nappies is useless if the child has outgrown that size, for example. I don’t have kids myself, so I’m not the best person to put together a comprehensive list of everything a child might need. But if you think about the things they go through on a weekly basis, you’ll need to add most to your emergency kit.
If any part of your kit is delinquent, it compromises the entire thing. In an ongoing emergency situation, where access to supplies may be difficult or impossible, the last thing you need is to run out of nappies or dog food because you didn’t include those elements in your plan!
Number 9: Cleaning and hygiene
Keeping clean – or at least as clean as possible – is the best thing you can do to prevent illness and infection during an emergency situation. As such, you’ll need some basic cleaning and personal hygiene supplies.
Soap. A good bar of pure soap lasts a long time, though those augmented with scents, oils, and the like tend to expire sooner. Regardless, a bar of soap is a great basic thing to keep around, and you almost don’t need anything else if you have enough bars of soap for each member of your household. If you only get one item from this section to begin with, make it a good quality bar of pure soap.
Dry shampoo and bodywash. Often sold as camping supplies, these are products for cleaning hair and your body that, as the name suggests, don’t need water.
Hand sanitiser. After the year we’ve all had, I think practically all of us have hand sanitiser lying around! Though I did include this above in the first aid section, having extra for personal hygiene and keeping your hands clean is a good idea too.
Feminine hygiene products – enough for everyone in the household.
Baby wipes and toilet tissue. Even if you don’t have kids, baby wipes are still a good idea to keep in your emergency kit.
Plenty of waterproof bin liners (garbage bags). In the event that the water supply is compromised, you’ll need somewhere to do your “business” – and some way to seal it up and get it away from your living quarters. Toileting in an emergency could be a whole essay in itself, but suffice to say that you’ll need somewhere to put bodily waste, and unless you want to invest in an expensive camping toilet or spend time digging a latrine outside, bin liners are probably the least bad option.
Number 10: Miscellaneous supplies and tools
In this category I’m going to dump everything not already covered! Let’s start with a basic tool kit. At the minimum you’ll want a hammer, a couple of screwdrivers, some nails, screws, tape measure, wire cutters, strong gloves, a spirit level, and a good box cutter/stanley knife. You never know when any of these items might come in handy, and if you don’t have them already it’s worth investing in a basic tool kit just to keep around the house!
You may also want to add a spanner or wrench, particularly if you think you may need to turn off your home’s water supply at the stopcock/stop tap. Contaminated or dirty water can be a source of disease, and in some cases it may be necessary to turn off the water supply entirely to prevent leaks or to stop dirty water entering your home.
This is a controversial one, but keeping at least a small amount of cash may be invaluable if payment systems aren’t working and you can’t get to an ATM. Obviously this is something that needs to be carefully and secretly stored, but it’s worthwhile having some just in case. This can also be useful if you’ve had your credit card or card details stolen and need to wait for the bank or your card issuer to resolve the situation. In short, there are possible scenarios where you’ll need cash – so keep some squirreled away!
A spare pair of glasses or extra contact lenses for everyone in the household who uses them.
A waterproof box or container to store important documents – the deed to your house, insurance policy, passport, birth and marriage certificates, etc. It can be worth investing in a fire-proof box for this purpose, but those are more expensive.
A good fire extinguisher. Before you buy or use one, check! Is it suitable for use on all types of fires or only some? If you get a water-based fire extinguisher, for example, you won’t be able to use it on electrical fires. Fire extinguishers also have a shelf life – typically several years – so you will need to check this and update it when required.
Disposable plates, bowls, cups, and cutlery. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have very many knives, forks, spoons, or plates! If we’re building a two-week emergency kit, having plenty to eat and drink is great – but not if you have no way to eat or drink it safely. Putting your bare hands into an open can could lead to injury, and if your hands aren’t clean you could get sick. Dirty crockery and cutlery can also harbour bacteria, so disposable is the way to go. There are a lot of card and paper-based options, so you don’t have to go with plastic if you’re concerned about the environment.
A wind-up (hand-crank) radio. Even if you have two or three portable battery banks and use your phone sparingly, it may eventually run out of battery power. A wind-up radio may be your best way to hear what’s going on in the outside world – including potentially important information about the emergency and the response from the authorities. I consider this one absolutely vital, something to add as soon as possible to your emergency kit.
A map of your local area – the higher-quality the better. Do you know all of the routes in and out of your local area? If the main road was cut off or unusable and there’s no Google Maps or sat-nav in your car, would you know an alternative? Having a good quality paper map of your local area could be valuable, not only for your own navigation but if you need to guide emergency responders to your location.
Pen and paper (or pencil and paper). Who knows what you might need to write down in an emergency. The time and date of events for insurance purposes, telephone numbers or contact details, or something random that we can’t predict! Having something to write with and something to write on is potentially going to be important. And if you’re artistic (or have artistic kids) having extra supplies for drawing and colouring is no bad thing too!
A good quality all-purpose knife is also a valuable tool to have. It can be used for all manner of things, from preparing food to household repair. Beware of anything that looks too cheap; the last thing you want is a broken knife blade potentially injuring someone.
You might want to invest in heavy-duty plastic sheeting. Not only is this waterproof, but if your emergency situation requires you to seal off part of your house, seal the doors and windows, or even just replace or patch a damaged or broken window, heavy-duty plastic and good strong tape will do a good job in the short term.
Number 11: Activities
Though an emergency situation is hardly a vacation, there’s a high likelihood that you’ll have a certain amount of down time – perhaps more than you’re used to. So many of us live digital lives, with our activities being primarily conducted via electronic devices. You know best what members of your household will like doing, but a library of fiction and non-fiction books is a good place to start, as well as board games like chess, scrabble, and the like.
You’ll want to have access to things that can keep your spirits up, as well as the spirits of others in your household. This will vary depending on the individual, but think ahead and make sure you can keep yourself and others entertained.
So that’s it.
That’s my guide for a basic two-week emergency kit. Two weeks is the longest that 99% of emergency scenarios I can think of could reasonably last. Obviously some exceedingly rare events can last longer, but even then your two week kit will have given you a real head-start.
An adequate water supply is, as you may have gathered, something I consider top priority. Many of the items in your emergency kit are designed to preserve as much of your water supply as possible for drinking – so you should use the bare minimum for things like washing, preparing food, etc. Water is also the bulkiest and heaviest part of your kit, so figuring out how and where to store it safely is important.
As I found when I got into preparedness and survivalism a few years ago, this is a rabbit hole that’s easy to fall down and get lost in. If you start thinking about all manner of unlikely scenarios it’s possible to convince yourself that no emergency kit will ever be complete and that you need ten years’ worth of food, expensive systems for storing and preparing things, and so on. If you have an unlimited budget and want to dig a bunker, go for it I guess. But in 99% of cases, having a two-week emergency kit will get you through whatever life throws at you. That’s what I base my current kit on, at any rate.
So this was a total change from what I usually talk about. But you know, I think it’s important. Not only to share my (admittedly limited) knowledge in this area, but also to shake things up and spend some time considering a different subject. I hope it was interesting and informative, and if you do decide to build an emergency kit for your household – which I fully encourage – I hope you’ll check out other sources as well, as there’s no telling what I might’ve missed!
Some stock photos courtesy of Pixabay and Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
We’ve recently talked about how the pandemic may have a long-term impact on cinema attendance and the box office, with many folks getting used to the convenience and practicality of streaming big blockbusters at home. But it seems cinemas just can’t catch a break, because it was recently announced that Amazon will be buying legendary Hollywood studio MGM.
Make no mistake, this is all about streaming. Amazon Prime Video looks set to benefit greatly from this acquisition, helping the service compete with the likes of Netflix and Paramount+ in terms of films. Though Amazon does have its own film studio, and has had a hand in titles like the Academy Award-winning Manchester By The Sea, most films available to stream via Amazon Prime Video were licensed from other companies. As more and more companies try to launch their own streaming platforms, these licensing deals are increasingly difficult (and expensive) for the likes of Netflix and Amazon, so finding ways to get their own in-house content is hugely important.
Buying MGM will enable Amazon to add a huge library of titles to its Prime Video streaming service.
Netflix has branched out into making more and more of its own original films – for better or worse! But Amazon is one of the world’s largest and most successful companies, having grown massively during the last year, and can throw its money around to buy up studios – and the rights to properties like The Lord of the Rings. We’ve recently seen Microsoft do something similar in the gaming realm, buying up Bethesda and adding that studio’s games to Xbox Game Pass. Amazon is doing the same thing with MGM.
I’ve seen some outlets trying to make the case that this is Amazon further diversifying its business model. What began as an online bookseller in the mid-1990s has grown to sell practically everything and has involvements and holdings in industries as far apart as space technology and baby nappies. But this MGM acquisition is not about diversification. Amazon doesn’t want to break into the film distribution market any more than they’re already involved; they want films, both old and new, to add to Amazon Prime Video for the sole purpose of driving more subscriptions. It’s that simple.
Amazon announced a deal to buy famed American film studio MGM for $8.45 billion.
This is a hammer blow for cinemas and cinema chains already reeling from the pandemic and associated closures and cancellations. We’ve already seen many films that would otherwise have received a theatrical release go direct-to-streaming, and Amazon’s acquisition of MGM comes with the real threat of all future MGM titles following suit. There aren’t many studios the size of MGM, releasing multiple high-budget titles per year, so this is a coup for Amazon.
Upcoming titles like the sequel to Tomb Raider, Legally Blonde III, Soggy Bottom, and House of Gucci would have all been draws at reopened cinemas around the world, but their theatrical releases are now in doubt. And that’s before we even consider one of the biggest upcoming MGM titles (at least from a UK perspective!) No Time To Die, the latest instalment in the James Bond series.
No Time To Die may still manage a theatrical release… or it may not.
It’s not unfair in the slightest to say that British cinemas have been desperately waiting for No Time To Die’s release, as no other upcoming film has quite as much potential to bring audiences back after well over a year of closures, lockdowns, and cancelled titles. Even the mere threat of No Time To Die going direct to streaming is enough to make a lot of people involved in the UK cinema industry very nervous, and I’m not sure we can rely on promises that the film will still meet its planned theatrical release in September – especially if the pandemic causes further disruption in the months ahead.
As I said when Microsoft acquired Bethesda, companies don’t spend these vast sums of money and expect nothing in return. With Amazon making this move to shore up and expand its library of streaming titles, any future MGM release now has the potential to end up on Amazon Prime Video either exclusively or alongside a release in cinemas. Even if imminent titles like No Time To Die meet their theatrical obligations – which will almost certainly be due to pre-existing contracts if it happens – future titles, both announced and unannounced, are almost certain to join Amazon’s streaming line-up. In short, cinemas may get a temporary reprieve from the fallout of this acquisition, but it won’t last much beyond the end of 2021.
Amazon will be expecting a serious return on such an expensive investment – and that’s all focused on streaming.
The way people consume media has been changing for years. The pandemic may have accelerated some of those changes to light-speed, but it isn’t the fundamental cause of a shift in audiences away from cinemas and broadcast television to online on-demand streaming. Just like the pandemic isn’t the root cause of problems with many high street shops, it can’t be blamed for people moving en masse toward an all-digital streaming future. The future of companies like MGM is in the digital space, and unfortunately for cinemas that means fewer films, smaller audiences, and growing irrelevance as bigger titles bypass a theatrical release altogether. Even in the pre-pandemic years, going to the cinema had become, for many folks, an occasional treat rather than a regular outing, and this move is simply a reflection of the changing way in which people choose to watch films.
Amazon’s acquisition of MGM is a big deal, but it’s unlikely to be the last such move as the so-called “streaming wars” look for new battlefields. It isn’t yet clear how many streaming services people are willing to put up with, nor which will ultimately survive, so it seems inevitable that more big studios and distributors will eventually team up with – or be bought out by – other big players in the streaming landscape. None of which is particularly pro-consumer, it has to be said, but then again I’d rather see MGM films go to Amazon Prime Video – a streaming service I already have access to – than wait for MGM to set up their own “MGM Plus” or whatever they would’ve called it!
It’s a serious blow to cinemas in the medium-to-long-term, even if some titles scheduled for this year will still get a full theatrical release. But will audiences really care? As I said last time, the shift away from the cinema had already set in long before the pandemic struck, and with film studios and audiences alike having discovered the many advantages of at-home streaming, it seems like we’ll be seeing a lot more of this type of acquisition or merger in the months and years ahead, with many more films going direct-to-streaming in the very near future. MGM may be one of the biggest so far, but it won’t be the last. Cinema chains and owners are already feeling the effects.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright and/or trademark of their respective owner, studio, company, distributor, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
One of the consequences of the pandemic has been the long-term closure of many cinemas (movie theaters for my American readers). Aside from a short respite last July and August, most cinemas here in the UK have been shut since March 2020 – for well over a year now. Some, like a local independent cinema near me, have had no choice but to close permanently, even with the end of lockdown seemingly in sight. Even when cinemas are able to reopen, limits on capacity due to social distancing, the general unease among many people about sitting in a room with dozens of strangers with the pandemic still ongoing, and most significantly, the lack of major film releases in the near term will – in my opinion, at least – most likely mean it will be a long time before things are able to get back to normal.
But will things ever get back to normal? That’s the question I want to ask today.
Will empty cinemas be full again one day?
In the early days of the pandemic, most films scheduled for release in spring or summer 2020 were simply postponed; their release dates pushed back by a few months so that they could be released to full crowds when lockdowns were lifted in their key markets. But as the pandemic has dragged on and on, film studios have begun to switch the way they release many big titles – opting to send them to streaming platforms rather than wait.
Without Remorse was originally supposed to get a theatrical release, but premiered on Amazon Prime Video instead. Raya and the Last Dragon went directly to Disney+. Then there are titles like Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Mulan, The Little Things, Godzilla vs. Kong, Bill & Ted Face The Music, News of the World, and Tom & Jerry. Upcoming titles such as Jungle Cruise, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Black Widow, Malignant, and A Quiet Place II are all going to either be released directly on streaming or with a limited theatrical run at the same time as going straight to streaming.
Animated film Raya and the Last Dragon went straight to Disney+ earlier in the year.
Is this a one-time thing, purely caused by the pandemic? And if it is, will audiences be happy to return to cinemas once the pandemic has cleared and they can fully reopen? If you’d asked me in March or April last year, I’d have said yes to both questions without hesitation. But now I’m not so sure.
There are a lot of advantages to streaming compared to going to the cinema, and as more and more people come to see those advantages, the cinema becomes a less-attractive option in contrast. This trend is not new – cinema attendance has declined a lot from where it was a few decades ago, and with the rise of high-quality television series which can rival and even surpass films in many cases, this is a reckoning that cinemas have had coming for a while. The pandemic has accelerated that to light-speed, but the trend has been going in this direction for a while.
Paramount+ is one of many competing streaming platforms that have arguably benefited from the forced closure of cinemas during the pandemic.
So what are the supposed advantages of at-home streaming? The first has to be convenience. Viewers can watch what they want on their own schedule, with the ability to pause a film to take a phone call or go to the bathroom, watching before or after work, or even late at night. It’s possible to watch with subtitles, audio description, director commentaries, and even watch in other languages. Most folks are more comfortable in their own homes than they are in a cinema chair – even the nicest cinema seats aren’t as pleasant as a comfy armchair or couch. There are no distractions from (other people’s) noisy kids, people munching popcorn, or idiots on their phones. You don’t have to sit through half an hour of adverts and trailers to get to the film. If you’re using a phone or tablet it’s possible to watch on the go, or literally anywhere. And some of the things we might’ve considered to be disadvantages a few years ago – such as screen size, resolution, and audio quality – are all easily surmountable even for folks on a limited budget.
Obviously not all of these points apply in every single case, but as a general rule, as screens get bigger and better, the need to watch something in the cinema is dropping. The old adage that a particular film was “better in the cinema” or “made for cinemas” no longer applies in many cases.
Amazon Prime Video have snapped up a number of films that couldn’t get a theatrical release this year – including Without Remorse.
I have a relatively inexpensive 4K television that doesn’t have OLED or HDR or any of those higher-end features, just a bog-standard LED set. But this model, even when I was buying it a few years ago, only started at a 40-inch screen size, with sizes going all the way up to 60″ or 65″. Nowadays, 85″ and 90″ sets are on the market and within reach of many consumers. Sound bars and speakers that put out fantastic quality audio are equally affordable, with prices dropping massively from where they had been when 4K and large screens were new. Even on my cheap and cheerful set, films look great. And if you sit reasonably close, it really does feel akin to being in the cinema – in the comfort of my own home.
It’s difficult, in my opinion, for cinemas to compete on price or quality. Even the more expensive streaming platforms, like Netflix, cost around £10-12 per month. It’s been a while since I was able to go to the cinema – health issues prevent me from doing so – but the last time I was able to go, £10 wouldn’t even stretch to two tickets. For that money you get one month’s worth of access to a massive library of titles – including many brand-new ones and Netflix originals made specially for the platform.
Large, good-quality television screens are increasingly affordable and offer a cinema-like experience at home.
In the late ’40s and ’50s, when my parents were young, going to the cinema was a frequent outing. You’d see an A- and B-movie, as well as perhaps a newsreel or something else, and it would feel like good value. Since the early 20th Century, going to the cinema on at least a weekly basis was a big part of many peoples’ lives – but things have been changing, slowly, for quite a while.
For at least the last couple of decades, going to the cinema is something most folks have viewed as an occasional treat rather than a regular outing. The price and value of a cinema ticket – and the additional extras like drinks and snacks – have shot up in relation to earnings, while at the same time the number of advertisements and trailers have also increased. Though the cinema still has a place in many folks’ lives, that place had been slipping long before the pandemic arrived. In the ’90s and 2000s, the blame for that lay with cable and satellite television channels, including many dedicated film channels. Nowadays, the blame has shifted to streaming.
Netflix has picked up a lot of subscribers in the past year.
Many film studios are keen to play their part in this trend, too. Sharing a big chunk of their profits with cinema chains and operators was never something they were wild about, which is why we’re seeing more and more studios and production companies either partnering with big streaming platforms or else trying to launch their own. Paramount+ exists for this reason, as do Disney+, HBO Max, and many others. These companies don’t care in the slightest about the fate of cinemas – except insofar as they can use them to turn a profit. When the pandemic meant that wasn’t possible, many companies happily jumped ship and released their films digitally instead.
Though I know a lot of people who have told me they’re keen to get back to the cinema as soon as possible, when I probed most of them further and asked how often they would go to the cinema pre-pandemic, or what films they were most excited to see at the cinema next, all of the answers I got back up everything I’ve been saying. Most folks go to the cinema infrequently at best, and while they’ve missed some of the social aspects of the “cinema experience,” they certainly haven’t missed the adverts, loud seat neighbours, and hassle. Streaming, while not as glamorous or exciting in some ways, is a more enjoyable experience in others.
Some people have missed every aspect of being at the cinema… but many haven’t!
I know I have to acknowledge my own bias here. As someone whose disability prevents them going to the cinema, I’d be quite happy if every film I want to watch from now on comes directly to streaming! On a purely selfish level, that’s something I’m fine with. And while I stand by the fact that the trend away from the cinema in a general sense is real and demonstrable, the pandemic probably hasn’t killed the entire concept of the cinema stone-dead. Nor would that be a good thing. Many cinemas offer more than just the latest blockbusters, with classic films, recorded theatre plays and ballet performances, and other such events. In the rural area where I live, the idea of being able to see something like the Royal Ballet is beyond a lot of people due to the distances involved. But local cinemas occasionally show things like ballets, operas, and Shakespeare plays, bringing a different kind of culture and entertainment to the region. Cinemas are also big local employers, and it’s nothing to celebrate when a local business is forced to close.
So most cinemas will eventually re-open. But the question I asked is still pertinent, because I don’t know whether they’ll see pre-pandemic numbers of visitors for a very long time – if at all. The pandemic has forced the hand of film studios and distributors, and the result has been an uptick in the number of subscribers to streaming platforms. Many folks have tried streaming for the first time, and while there will always be holdouts, people who proclaim that it really is “better in the cinema,” I think a lot of people have been surprised at how enjoyable streaming a film at home can be, and how favourably it can compare to the cinema experience.
Many people haven’t missed the “cinema experience” as much as they expected.
A big home theatre setup is no longer necessary. With a relatively inexpensive – but still large – television set and maybe a sound bar or pair of satellite speakers, many people can have a truly cinema-like experience in their own living rooms. And a lot of people who’ve tried it for the first time, prompted by lockdown, may have no plans to return to the cinema any time soon – or if they do, they’ll be making fewer trips.
In my opinion, this is something that has the potential to continue to build over time. As screens continue to improve, and as more people eschew the cinema in favour of staying in, more films will go direct to streaming because companies will see more success and more money in it. Fewer films will end up in cinemas exclusively, so fewer people will go. And the cycle will continue!
Even if I’m wrong on that final point, I do believe that we’ve already seen a slow move away from cinemas in the pre-pandemic years. The pandemic came along and blew the lid off that, and while there will be a return once things settle down, at-home streaming is here to stay. It benefits viewers and companies – the only folks who are going to lose out are the cinema chains themselves. I’m not saying it’s a positive thing necessarily, although it does stand to benefit me in some respects, nor am I advocating for it. But when I look at the way things have been going over the past few years, and add the pandemic’s disruption into the mix, I really do feel that we’re seeing a big move away from the cinema in favour of at-home streaming.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, distributor, production company, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
A love of football has been in my family since my great-grandfather first emigrated to England in the late 1800s! My grandfather attended his first football match shortly after the First World War, and was a lifelong fan of Fulham – a team whose fortunes have bounced around a lot in recent years. The sport has changed immeasurably since then, with the upper echelons of football becoming awash with money and arguably losing touch with the working-class roots someone of my grandfather’s generation would recognise.
The amount of money in football is partly driven by television broadcasting, but also by a change in the way clubs themselves operate. No longer are clubs content to make a small profit; enough to pay the wages, maintain their ground, and keep the lights on. Instead, some of the biggest clubs in the country have become corporations, earning huge profits for shareholders and/or private owners – many of whom are based overseas.
Football has changed a lot since my grandfather’s day!
Football has seen a number of rules added and changed over the years. Extra time and penalty shoot-outs have replaced replays. The offside rule, and adjustments to it, changed the way matches are played. There were “golden goals” for a while! And of course, the recent addition of VAR (video assistant referees) has been controversial in some quarters. These rules affect the game in different ways, and we can argue whether each one has been for better or worse.
Recent events over the last year or so have shone light on the fact that English football is missing two rules that I think are absolutely vital to the future success and integrity of the sport. It’s surprising to me that a professional league like the Premier League never adopted such rules in the first place, or that the EFL, which has been running since 1888, has never considered either rule necessary. Let’s look at each in turn.
The logo of the English Football League.
Firstly we’re considering something that the pandemic brought into sharp focus last year: what to do if a season can’t be completed. For some reason, the Premier League, EFL, and other leagues around the world appear to have no provision for this scenario – yet it’s something that any professional body should be planning for. There was an intense debate last year about what to do in the event that the season couldn’t resume following pandemic-related disruption, and the absolutely stunning thing to me was that there seemed to be nothing in the rulebook to cover this.
Professional football has been disrupted in the past, by both world wars. Even though no such disruption had occurred since the 1940s, it should still have been a possibility for the Football League to consider when drafting and updating its rules, and it’s really a dereliction of duty – or else rank incompetence – that no one knew what was going on last year. Football’s governing bodies appear to have taken the approach of “it probably won’t happen,” and just not bothered to put any kind of rule or guidance in place. That’s not acceptable and has to change.
What should happen if the football season is disrupted again?
The rule needs to be ironclad and simple, so there’s no room for argument or cries of “unfair” based on the performance of individual clubs. I would have it look something like this:
In the event that a season cannot be completed, one of the following will apply: If fewer than one-third of scheduled matches have been completed, the season is declared null and void. All points earned, goals scored, yellow and red cards awarded, and so on are considered entirely expunged. When a new season is able to commence, all teams remain in place, with no promotion or relegation taking place. If more than one-third of matches have been completed, the season will be considered complete. League table positions will be considered final, with promotion and relegation based on current standings. All goals, yellow and red cards, etc. will remain on the books.
An empty football ground.
When the rule has been decided on and incorporated into the laws of the game, no club will be able to cry “unfair!” if a future season is disrupted and needs to end early. It might be difficult to agree on the appropriate cut-off, before which the season is voided and after which the season is declared complete. I’ve suggested one-third of the total number of matches, because usually by that point in the season things are becoming clear as to which clubs are doing well and which aren’t.
If one-third of matches doesn’t seem right, that number could be changed to half, 75%, or whatever clubs agreed on. But the principle remains: there needs to be a cut-off point at which the season is declared complete, and a point at which the season is simply declared void. Every club needs to sign up to this, so that there will never again be the kinds of arguments we saw last year.
New rules need to be written ASAP!
The second new rule pertains to the European Super League, the failure of which is one thing fans of practically every club can agree was fantastic! When the European Super League was proposed, I wrote a piece for the website criticising the project for its patent unfairness. But that’s kind of beside the point. The new rule needs to prohibit any team(s) from joining a breakaway competition without the explicit permission of the Premier League and Football League, and needs to specify strict penalties for any clubs that do so without permission.
As above, this rule needs to be watertight and easily understood, with no loopholes or get-out clauses. It will also need to be specific on the penalties for clubs that violate the rule. I propose something like this:
No team may agree to join or participate in any competition, league, tournament, or match, even in principle, without seeking the prior agreement of the Football League and a majority of member clubs. No “breakaway” competition, league, or tournament may be set up without the permission of the Football League and a majority of member clubs. Penalties for violating this rule will include: an immediate twenty-point deduction for any club involved, the complete prohibition of any player involved in such a league, competition, etc. from playing in any match in the Football League, Premier League, FA Cup, and other football competitions in England, and for clubs that continue to violate this rule over the course of more than one season, expulsion from the Premier League, Football League, and all other English competitions.
The “treacherous six” – the six English clubs that tried to undermine football.
Despite the rapid collapse of the European Super League, some of the wealthiest clubs and individuals involved in English and European football have not given up on the idea altogether. However, they have now tipped their hand, which gives the Football League, Premier League, and other European leagues time to act and bring in these kinds of harsh penalties to discourage it from ever happening again.
English clubs are already threatened with a ten-point deduction for falling into administration (i.e. becoming insolvent) so the principle of points deductions for bad behaviour exists and is acceptable. If a twenty-point deduction were put into place for the six Premier League teams who tried to join the European Super League last month, at least two – possibly three – would have been relegated. Arsenal, Liverpool, and Tottenham would all be in or just above the relegation zone, so this kind of threat will work.
Arsenal would be in serious trouble if there were consequences for their failed attempt to join the European Super League.
In Scotland there are two huge teams: Celtic and Rangers. They’re the two biggest clubs in Scottish football, and between them have dominated the Scottish league and cups for decades. But in 2012, following a series of financial issues, Rangers was relegated from the Scottish Premiership and had to begin all over again from the Scottish Third Division. Rangers is a case in point: no club, no matter how big and powerful they think they are, is above the rules.
Scottish football was dominated by Celtic in Rangers’ absence, and it was only this season – for the first time in a decade – that anyone other than Celtic won the league. English football is not a two-horse race, so the relegation of even clubs like Liverpool or Manchester United would not lead to one team dominating in the way it did in Scotland. It might even be a net positive for English football overall.
I love football. The unpredictability of the sport, especially in cup competitions, is fantastic. But as the game has become a worldwide money-making machine, corruption and greed have followed. The two rule changes I’m suggesting wouldn’t fix everything wrong with football in England. But they’d be a step in the right direction.
All brands and clubs listed above, along with shirts, logos, etc. are the copyright of their respective owners. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
It’s been a long time since I visited a Disney theme park, but with the re-opening of Disneyland in California recently hitting the headlines, I’ve been thinking about past visits. I’ve been very lucky to have visited three of the six Disney parks in my life, and though California’s Disneyland is the original and thus a classic, for my money you can’t beat Walt Disney World in Florida. There’s just so much more going on and so much more to do!
The last time I visited Walt Disney World was in 2006, and there have been many changes to the resort and its four constituent parks since then. This list won’t reflect those changes, so don’t expect to see me talk about Galaxy’s Edge and Rise of the Resistance. I would love to try that ride for myself one day, but my health prevents me from travelling (even if there weren’t a pandemic going on) so I doubt I’ll ever get to experience it for myself.
Cinderella’s Castle is the centrepiece and icon of Walt Disney World.
Luckily, though, I had several wonderful Disney experiences earlier in my life while I was able, and I’ve visited the parks both with family and with friends. Disney World – and the other parks – are presented as family-oriented attractions, but even as an adult you’ll find plenty going on and lots of things to have fun with.
So let’s celebrate all things Disney by picking out ten of my favourite rides and attractions! For the record, because I know people like to argue: I’m not saying these are objectively the best things to do at Disney World. These are simply ten rides and attractions that I enjoyed at the park on my earlier visits. If you have your own favourites and don’t like these ones, that’s okay! There’s a broad range of things to do at Disney World, with rides and attractions to cater to many different folks and the things they enjoy. We don’t all have to like the same things!
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at my list.
Number 1: The Tomorrowland Transit Authority/PeopleMover
The Tomorrowland Transit Authority/PeopleMover track.
I said at the beginning that this isn’t a top ten list of my absolute favourite rides. But if it were, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority would be my number one! It’s almost certainly my favourite ride at the Magic Kingdom and the whole of Disney World, which might come as a surprise considering it’s very tame. Unlike other slow rides at Disney, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority doesn’t really have its own theme, instead making a loop of Tomorrowland – one part of the Magic Kingdom – from about one storey up.
The Tomorrowland Transit Authority is fun and interesting, passing through several rides in Tomorrowland and a shop, giving you a birds-eye view over much of the future-themed area of the park. It’s gentle, so it’s perfect for young kids and others who don’t enjoy fast-moving rides, and unlike many of Disney’s other slow rides it isn’t in the dark, which again makes it great for kids who might not be so happy in the dark.
There usually isn’t a horribly long queue for the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (or at least, not as far as I remember from past visits) which, combined with its gentle nature, means it’s something relatively easy to do in between “bigger” attractions. Riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority can nicely punctuate a visit to the Magic Kingdom, providing a way to slow down while still enjoying a ride. But it’s absolutely great fun on its own merit, and well worth a visit. If I ever go back to Walt Disney World, I’m making a beeline for the Tomorrowland Transit Authority as soon as I walk through the gate!
Number 2: El Rio del Tiempo (Mexico Pavilion at Epcot)
The entrance to El Rio del Tiempo. Photo Credit: Disney Wiki
Sadly, El Rio del Tiempo has been re-themed since I last visited the parks, with the dark ride now taking on a theme based loosely on The Three Caballeros, a 1944 film featuring Disney mainstay Donald Duck. I believe the ride layout remains the same, though, despite the re-theming, so I imagine the gentle pace of the attraction has been retained.
Epcot’s World Showcase is an eclectic mix of different countries, with themed areas representing different parts of the world. There are points of interest and lots of places to eat, but what World Showcase doesn’t have in abundance are rides. The Mexico Pavilion contained my favourite, which is/was a dark ride set inside the attraction’s Mayan pyramid. The version of the ride I remember was a gentle boat ride, with no big drops or splashes, and after trailing around World Showcase in the Florida heat, it was great to take a break and sit down in the shade – and air conditioning!
A lot of theme parks (especially here in the UK) go all-in on thrill rides, trying to outdo each other with bigger and faster rollercoasters. Walt Disney World has always been great at having slower, gentler attractions that aren’t just rides for kids, and El Rio del Tiempo was a great example of an adult-oriented dark ride, one which paid homage to Mexico and Mexican history in a respectful way. I haven’t ridden the updated Donald Duck version, but I hope it managed to keep some of what made the original attraction so pleasurable.
Number 3: The Great Movie Ride
A recreation of Hollywood’s famous Chinese Theater served as the building for The Great Movie Ride. Photo Credit: The Walt Disney Company
Another attraction that, sadly, can no longer be ridden, The Great Movie Ride was one of the original rides and showpieces of Disney’s MGM Studios/Hollywood Studios. It closed in 2017, being replaced by Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway. As with El Rio del Tiempo above, this reflects a move on Disney’s part to introduce its own characters and brands into all of the rides at Disney parks.
What I loved most about The Great Movie Ride was that a cast member (i.e. a real person) was present throughout, serving as a guide as the ride took you through clever recreations of scenes from famous films like Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even Alien. There was an incredible diversity of films on display, and having a live performer along with the wonderful animatronics brought the world of Hollywood to life in a way I’d never really experienced before.
The Great Movie Ride was a love letter not just to the “Golden Age” of Hollywood, but to cinema in general. The queue area contained actual props from more than a dozen films – including the famous ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz and a dress worn by Kate Winslet in Titanic. While it makes sense in some ways for Disney to want to stick to its own brands, I think something significant was lost with the closure of The Great Movie Ride that took away from Hollywood Studios’ premise as a park.
Galaxy’s Edge was not the first Star Wars-themed attraction at Disney World. Not by a long shot! Star Tours opened in 1989, and is still open today – albeit having been given a makeover! Unlike most attractions at Disney World, Star Tours is a simulator, meaning that it stays in one place and doesn’t follow a track.
I can still remember the thrill of boarding Star Tours in the early 1990s, not too long after having seen the Star Wars trilogy for the first time. Actually boarding a starship, complete with a droid pilot, and going on my own Star Wars adventure was a geeky kid’s absolute dream, and the sense of wonder I had as the doors to the simulator opened that first time is a memory that has stuck with me for decades.
The simulator itself was clever, and the ride managed to really give you the sensation of being a spaceship passenger, lurching from side to side and up and down as the ship tried to escape Imperial attacks! The “story” of the ride was, of course, a bit silly, but the experience of being part of Star Wars – even just for a few minutes – is something I’ve never forgotten. I haven’t been able to ride the updated version of Star Tours, but I’m sure it’s just as much fun, and that there are young Star Wars fans today about to have that same kind of experience!
Number 5: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean exterior (at Disneyland Paris). Photo Credit: Trekking with Dennis
Pirates of the Caribbean was a ride long before anyone conceived of Jack Sparrow or the film franchise! And it’s a fun pirate-themed boat ride perfect for Adventureland. It wasn’t the first ride to be given the feature film treatment – that dubious honour goes to Hollywood Studios’ Tower of Terror, which saw a truly mediocre adaptation in 1997 – but it’s not unfair to say it’s been the most successful to date.
The ride itself – at least the classic version, prior to being updated with characters from the films – didn’t have a strong story, instead comprising little more than a set of pirate-themed scenes loosely bound together. Thus there wasn’t much to “adapt” to bring it to screen, just a theme and a song.
Though the ride has now been updated to reflect the popularity of the films, which makes sense, the original version was plenty of fun. The ride is a step in between something like El Rio del Tiempo and more thrilling, faster-paced rides, containing several short drops and faster sections rather than simply being a slow boat tour in the dark. Pirates of the Caribbean is a Disney classic, and one that nobody should miss when visiting!
Number 6: The Monorail
A Walt Disney World Monorail train.
Though you aren’t technically supposed to… this is the only ride on this list you can ride for free! Because the Monorail runs outside of Disney World itself, connecting the theme parks to several resort hotels and the main entrance, it’s possible to hop aboard even if you don’t have a ticket for the theme park – or at least, it used to be!
The Monorail is a lot of fun to ride, and offers great views of both the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. As a kid, I was seriously impressed with the way the Monorail glides through the inside of the Contemporary Resort – one of the hotels near the Magic Kingdom. The idea of a train going inside of a hotel blew my mind!
It’s designed to be a practical method of transportation, providing guests with an easy connection between their hotels or the car park and the theme parks. But the Monorail is so lovingly designed and well maintained that it’s a fun ride in itself. It also bookends a day at the parks – and even a whole Disney trip – perfectly, by beginning and ending with a ride.
Number 7: Spaceship Earth
Spaceship Earth is symbolic of Epcot.
Epcot’s talisman is a perfect representation of the concept behind the Epcot theme park. It’s a dark ride that goes through a summarised version of history, specifically the history of communication, with great animatronics and excellent narration. Epcot was originally intended as a park with a greater emphasis on imagination and education, showing off a particular vision for a possible future. Spaceship Earth is one of the few remaining elements of that original vision, with others having been closed or Disney-fied.
Spaceship Earth is the first thing you seen upon entering Epcot, and the huge geodesic sphere can be seen from all over the park. Its futuristic design still looks great as the park approaches its fortieth anniversary, and it’s become absolutely iconic. I hope that a planned renovation of the ride, which was due to start last year before the pandemic delayed things, doesn’t take away its educational charm.
Because Spaceship Earth is the first attraction inside the gate, it’s easy to make it your first port of call in Epcot. In my recollection, the queue wasn’t especially long on any of the occasions I wanted to ride, and inside a combination of moving walkways and continuously-moving ride vehicles seem to provide a smooth experience. The final part of the ride, which takes you through a field of stars “into the future” always feels moving and beautiful, and the ride ends on a very optimistic and hopeful note.
Number 8: Kilimanjaro Safaris
The sign welcoming guests to Kilimanjaro Safaris.
In 1998 my family and I were fortunate to be among the first guests ever welcomed into Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The new theme park was fantastic, and coming a few short years after The Lion King had been in cinemas, it was wonderful to see Disney really embracing the animal theme. Kilimanjaro Safaris is, as you might expect from the name, a safari ride.
Growing up, my family visited South Africa on a few occasions to visit an aunt who had moved there, and I lived in South Africa for a time shortly after graduating from university, so I’ve been lucky to have been on a real safari on a number of occasions. And I have to say, Kilimanjaro Safaris compares positively to the real thing! Because the ride is relatively compact, it’s possible to see many different animals – real animals, not animatronics – during the course of your expedition, which is fantastic.
There is a story to the ride, and like The Great Movie Ride above, Kilimanjaro Safaris has a cast member driving the ride vehicle to serve as your guide, adding a whole extra level of immersion. The animals at Animal Kingdom are well cared-for, and while it is still a “zoo” of sorts, knowing that the animals have space to roam and aren’t confined to small cages is nice to know. Getting up close and personal with some of these wild animals might otherwise be impossible, so Kilimanjaro Safaris offers a unique experience that really can’t be found elsewhere.
Number 9: Splash Mountain
Splash Mountain looms large over Frontierland!
After putting so many slower rides on the list, I suppose we need at least one “thrill ride” before we wrap things up! Splash Mountain is a log flume with a slow and tense build-up to a long drop, and it’s very easy to get absolutely soaked while riding! The ride is being re-themed at some point in the near future, following criticism of its present theme, which includes elements from the controversial film Song of the South. The new theme will draw on The Princess and the Frog, and based on concept art looks fantastic.
Splash Mountain slowly builds up a sense of tension. A couple of smaller drops get you riled up for the big one, and the slightly creepy vibe present in some of the animatronic scenes really ramps things up as you… go up the ramp! By the time the big drop is imminent, the ride has done its job of building anticipation!
I’ve always enjoyed Splash Mountain, and though I don’t expect to be able to see the re-themed version any time soon, it sounds like it’s in good hands. It’s one of the main attractions in Frontierland, and one of the “three mountains of the Magic Kingdom” along with Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain. Doing all three in a day makes for an amazing and thrilling time!
Number 10: Peter Pan’s Flight
Entry to Peter Pan’s Flight. Photo Credit: Disney Wiki
Peter Pan’s Flight is a dark ride that vaguely follows the story of the 1953 film, taking you on a journey to Neverland with Peter and the Darlings. The gentle ride is great for young kids, and the adventure of following Peter Pan as he flies above London and battles Captain Hook is rendered beautifully with Disney’s animatronics.
Clever use of forced perspective really does give you the sensation of flight – being high above London and Neverland, looking down. It’s a very well-designed ride to get that sense of scale, and I’ve always appreciated that about Peter Pan’s Flight. Most of the characters from the film are present, including Tinker Bell and Captain Hook, and it’s just a cute, fun ride.
Given the recent controversy surrounding the way Native Americans were depicted, and Peter Pan’s restricted access on Disney+ that has resulted, I wouldn’t be surprised if Peter Pan’s Flight is reworked or even closed and entirely re-themed at some point in the near future. So this might be one to ride while you can!
Bonus: Fireworks displays
Fireworks in the Magic Kingdom.
Few places in the world do fireworks displays as well as Walt Disney World. Even though I’m not the world’s biggest fan of fireworks, which I feel can be a tad boring, the displays Disney World puts on at the Magic Kingdom and Epcot in particular are absolutely fantastic, and well worth sticking around for after dark.
Seeing the fireworks pop over Cinderella’s Castle, while also watching performers in costume as Mickey, Minnie, the Princesses, and other Disney favourites is one of the must-do experiences while in Disney World, especially if you’re visiting with kids. Not only is it a quintessential Disney World experience in itself, it’s also one of the best fireworks shows you’re ever likely to see!
Most places around the world are only treated to fireworks once or twice a year, so seeing a live display – especially a professional one on a large scale – does still present a sense of wonder and excitement, even to an old cynic like me! It’s a great way to end a day at the parks.
So that’s it. Ten of my favourite attractions at Walt Disney World.
No Rise of the Resistance for me… yet!
Did your favourite(s) make the list? If not, I hope you’ll stay tuned. This is a subject I’m sure I’ll revisit at some point in future, as there are at least ten more rides and attractions I can think of that didn’t make this first list! Disney World really has something for everyone, in my opinion. Whether you want the thrill of a fast rollercoaster, an immersive story-based ride, something gentle to do with young kids, or a show to sit down and watch, there’s so much going on that kids and adults of all ages should be able to find something to enjoy. I greatly enjoyed my visits to the park, and I’m glad to have been able to attend while I was capable of doing so.
The great thing about Walt Disney World is – as Walt Disney himself said – that the parks are “never finished.” There will always be changes, additions, and updates to keep things fresh and interesting, and while the trend in recent years has been for including more of Disney’s own characters and intellectual properties, that may not always be the case, and we could see more changes in future that bring back ideas like The Great Movie Ride or Epcot’s Innoventions.
Regardless, I hope this list was a bit of fun, and maybe a trip down memory lane for those of you who, like me, haven’t been able to visit the parks in a number of years.
All rides and attractions listed above are the copyright of and owned by Disney Parks and/or The Walt Disney Company. Some images courtesy of the Disney Wiki and Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
One potential news story that I opted not to cover here on the website was a recent social media post by Worf actor Michael Dorn. In a single Twitter post, Dorn wrote the following: “Just got the news, being summoned back into action. Starfleet calls. #ad”
Well, no sooner had that post hit Twitter than the Star Trek fan community began scrambling to “break” the news of Worf’s return to Star Trek. Websites, blogs, and YouTube shows all jumped on Dorn’s post, using headlines like: “Michael Dorn CONFIRMS Worf’s Return!” As the battle for clicks escalated, Trekkies online began speculating about what form Worf’s return could take, and this too began to grow and spiral out of control.
The Tweet that launched a thousand clickbait articles…
The Captain Worf series that he’s been trying to get off the ground for the better part of a decade seemed to be 100% confirmed, if you believed certain websites and channels. Others were convinced the Twitter post meant Worf would appear in Picard Season 2 or Discovery Season 4. And of course, many outlets reported their wild speculation with minimal caveats as though it were fact.
All of this hype came crashing down within 48 hours, however, when it became clear that Dorn’s Twitter post was nothing more than an advertisement for mobile game Star Trek Legends, an Apple Arcade exclusive title. Legends looks like so many other mobile games released in the last few years, and I have no desire to sign up to Apple Arcade at £5 per month just to play one mediocre-looking title. Even if it does have Worf!
Logo for Star Trek Legends.
Uninspired mobile games aside, I think this whole Michael Dorn saga is yet another example in a very long line of how we have to be incredibly careful how we use social media and how difficult it is to trust even supposedly “reputable” outlets. In this piece I’ll look at the issue as it relates to the Star Trek fan community in particular, but obviously these same broad points can apply to news, politics, and so on.
Michael Dorn’s post was designed to get attention. He may have written it himself, but it’s equally likely – in my opinion as someone who used to work in video games marketing – that it was written by the marketing team behind Star Trek Legends. But whoever wrote the actual words, the post was deliberately ambiguous and designed to get Trekkies talking, playing on fan hopes of the return of a major character who hasn’t been seen on screen since 2002.
Worf made his last canonical appearance in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis.
Marketers do this kind of thing all the time; it’s a nostalgia play. It isn’t the first time we’ve seen it in the Star Trek community, either. But because we’re in an age of 24/7 social media use, some of the biggest names in the online Star Trek fandom jumped on Dorn’s comment, seeing an easy way to get clicks – and thus money – for themselves.
Reading the Twitter post, and especially seeing the #ad hashtag, it should’ve been screamingly obvious that this was not connected to a new television show or film. And I have no doubt whatsoever that the social media managers, webmasters, and fan group leaders who began to write clickbaity articles and produce clickbait videos knew that for a fact. But they did so anyway. It was a topic of conversation – and an easy win. Who wouldn’t click on a video or article that screamed “Worf is coming back!” in big bold capital letters? For fans unaware of the original Twitter post, they jumped on such articles and videos hoping to learn that Worf was getting his own show or that he would appear in Picard – the natural implication of such a headline.
Worf having a role in Picard Season 2 was something some fans speculated about at length.
I’m lucky to have my own website, and that means I can cover the topics I want to at my own pace. I did see the Michael Dorn controversy unfold, but two things became apparent very quickly. First was that no one commenting online, no matter how large their website and following, actually knew anything substantial. And second, Dorn’s post had the #ad hashtag, which meant it was clearly connected to a product of some kind. Star Trek Legends turned out to be that product.
As a result, I chose not to cover a “story” that was a bag of nothing. I could easily have penned a short article about the prospects of a Captain Worf series and the potential for Worf to appear in Picard Season 2, Discovery Season 4, or Lower Decks Season 2. Maybe doing so would have driven traffic to the website. But it would’ve felt more than a little dishonest.
Worf in The Next Generation Season 7 episode Lower Decks.
Rumours swirl in the Star Trek fan community all the time – as indeed they do in every online community. But most of these “rumours” are clearly nonsense, based on unverified and often unspecified sources. The truth is that ViacomCBS and the creative team in charge of Star Trek generally do a good job at keeping a lid on leaks. Occasionally a story will leak ahead of an official announcement, but as we’ve seen with some big projects recently, including the new film scheduled for 2023, most of the time that is simply not the case. Yet many social media channels, fan groups, and websites insist on reporting rumour as if it were fact.
When I write speculatively here on the website, you’ll note that I always caveat what I’m saying by explaining that I have no “insider information” nor any “sources.” This is specifically to damp down any theory or speculation that I’m writing about and to clarify that it’s just guesswork on my part. Sometimes it’s educated guesswork, putting together things that seem obvious even if there’s yet to be official confirmation, but even then such a caveat is incredibly important.
Worf is a character in mobile game Star Trek Legends.
It’s easy for a website or social media group to fall into the trap of writing clickbait based on things like Michael Dorn’s Twitter post, but it doesn’t do anything for the Star Trek fan community. In some cases it can be actively harmful – building up hype and expectations that are obviously only going to lead to disappointment. Marketing folks need to be aware of this, as well. As much as Dorn’s post got people talking about Star Trek Legends, they deliberately set up Trekkies for disappointment by allowing Dorn to imply – albeit in a way that should’ve been easy for fans to see through – that Worf was coming back to Star Trek.
But the blame in this case doesn’t lie only with the marketing team at Star Trek Legends, who are, after all, doing their best to market a product. It lies with fan groups, websites, and social media channels who took that obvious piece of marketing and put their own spin on it, building up the hype of Worf’s possible return to Star Trek in order to drive clicks, views, and website traffic.
Worf in a teaser video for Star Trek Legends posted on Twitter.
This is what I mean by the “spiral” of clickbait: a slightly dishonest marketing post on social media appears. Fan websites and social media channels jump on it and take it out of context, in some cases completely disregarding or ignoring the possibility of it being marketing. As the hype bubble starts to build, more outlets and fans jump on the story, talking about it and driving more and more clicks and traffic. What began as a single post advertising a mobile game thus exploded to become a big story online, and it didn’t need to be. From the marketers’ point of view, it’s a rousing success! But for fans, at best it’s a mild disappointment.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find reliable, objective sources of information online, and it’s getting to a point where, unless something is confirmed unambiguously by an official outlet, I don’t trust it.
We all need to be careful what we read and watch, and try our best not to give in to clickbait!
Star Trek Legends is out now for iOS devices via Apple Arcade. The Star Trek franchise – including all titles mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
In 2011 I found myself in London working with a client. It just so happened that, during the month I was in the capital, the wedding of Prince William was set to take place. Royal events like weddings and funerals are broadcast live in the UK and around the world, and doing so is an incredible logistical feat that takes a huge amount of planning. In this current coronavirus moment, with restrictions and limitations in place, the upcoming funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh will be quite different to the royal event I – in a very minor way – attended a decade ago.
Although my health was in decline by 2011, at that point I was still working full-time and was still able to travel in relative comfort, so when a client I’d worked with for several years asked me to spend some time in their office with their marketing team I happily agreed and travelled to London. All expenses paid, I thought, so why not? I stayed in a small room in a shared apartment in King’s Cross, from where my client’s office was a short commute. It was, for someone who grew up in a small rural community, a change of scene! Though I’d lived in cities before, I never really got used to the dense crowds of places like London – but if I thought my commute or my lunch break were busy, that was nothing compared to the royal wedding!
Crowds at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011.
After several years of dating, Prince William and Kate Middleton – now Kate, Duchess of Cambridge – announced their engagement in November 2010, and planning for the wedding kicked into high gear not only for the royal family, but for media companies as well. Though Prince Charles’ second wedding to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall in 2005 had attracted a modest television audience of around 7 million in the UK, his first wedding to Diana, Princess of Wales in 1981 picked up an audience of over 28 million in the UK – and some 750 million worldwide. Broadcasters certainly expected William and Kate to manage something similar!
A huge event was planned, and the royal family were accommodating of the media, despite decades of mistrust between them, setting up cameras and microphones to capture every single moment of the day. Screens were set up in public parks in London – where I watched the ceremony – and all around the UK, and people lined the routes waving flags and joining in. After sitting to watch the wedding in Green Park – a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace – I found myself on the Mall in time for the newlyweds’ appearance on the palace balcony, as well as to see a flyover by the Royal Air Force.
My view of Buckingham Palace from the Mall in 2011.
There were an estimated one million people on the Mall along with me, and scenes of the event were broadcast to an audience of some 30+ million in the UK, and well over 160 million worldwide. It’s always been a source of interest to be able to tell people that “I was there” – even though I’m no royalist and wouldn’t have attended on purpose, it’s certainly something interesting to have participated in while I was able. An event.
Royal funerals, too, tend to draw significant audiences, and in light of the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh last week, it’s these events we should really be looking to for points of comparison.
The funerals of both the Queen Mother in 2002 and Princess Diana in 1997 are the largest royal funerals of note in the last few years, and the best comparisons to what we could expect to see on Saturday. The Queen Mother’s 2002 funeral picked up an audience of over 10 million in the UK – but this is barely a third of the 32 million who tuned in to see the funeral of Princess Diana.
The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales was a massive television event in 1997.
Royal weddings, like the one mentioned above, are meticulously planned months ahead of time, with every detail ironed out. With eight days between the announcement of Prince Philip’s death and the funeral, you’d think that putting together an event like this, with plans to televise it worldwide, would be impossible. But that’s far from the truth.
The reality is that the royal family and broadcasters have been working on funeral plans for Prince Philip and other senior royals for decades. Prince Philip himself is said to have worked on his own funeral arrangements, crafting an event that would cause, in his words, “minimal fuss,” and even designing his own Land Rover-based hearse! Perhaps he would have appreciated the scaled-back nature of this event, caused by the pandemic, which means a maximum of thirty people can be in attendance!
A lot has changed since even the wedding of William and Kate ten years ago in terms of the way audiences consume media, and I will be genuinely interested to see whether the viewing figures for Prince Philip’s funeral come close to matching other comparable royal events. The move away from broadcast television to on-demand streaming has changed the way many people, especially younger people, interact with what they watch.
In a growing number of cases, people are opting not to watch any broadcast television, replacing it with subscriptions to streaming platforms, and even eschewing the traditional television set in favour of smaller, portable screens like phones and tablets. While that wouldn’t be my preference for how to watch, well, anything, I can’t deny that it’s a trend that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. How many of these people will step away from Netflix, YouTube, or Paramount+ to tune into a royal funeral, I wonder, and how many will simply opt to watch highlights later?
How many people will watch the funeral live, and how many will simply stream the highlights afterwards?
Royal events have been huge draws for television audiences going back to at least the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. My father can vividly remember crowding around a brand-new television to watch the queen’s coronation, and while in 2021 we shouldn’t be crowding around anything, there is still power in royalty for television broadcasters. One need only look to the success of Netflix’s The Crown as evidence.
So it will be a point of interest to learn how many viewers turn up for Prince Philip on Saturday. Broadcasters will have had a number of plans in place for different events, different crowd sizes, and even different weather conditions. April weather in the UK can be unpredictable – in the last couple of days it snowed, coming after several days of unseasonably warm weather! So you never know what you might be up against, something broadcasters will have to work around.
The Crown on Netflix shows how big of a draw anything involving the royal family can be.
In 2011, to get back to my own experience, while exploring the Mall in the days before the wedding, and on the day itself, I came upon a temporary structure that had been built opposite Buckingham Palace especially to house a number of different domestic and international broadcasters. It was an odd shade of green and appeared to have been built largely from wood and scaffolding! Regardless, it did its job and quite a few broadcasters – including big ones like the BBC – appear to have made use of it.
Whether such a structure will be able to be built in time for the funeral is not clear, nor are whether restrictions in place because of coronavirus would even allow for so many people to work in such close proximity. The pandemic has disrupted so many events and plans, and Prince Philip’s funeral is no exception.
The temporary media structure in 2011.
It’s a huge logistical effort to televise an event of this nature, and given the pandemic and associated restrictions, it will be a herculean task to get everything ready in time so that the funeral and its broadcast go smoothly. But plans have been in place for a long time – just as there are plans for other big funerals and events – so all the broadcasters have to do at this point is put them into place efficiently.
On a personal note, as someone who grew up in the UK with family members who were generally pro-monarchy, the passing of Prince Philip is a noteworthy event. We shouldn’t taint that nor sidestep it with criticisms of the man or the institution; there will be time in future to discuss both monarchy as a concept and the present royal family, but now is not the right moment. Suffice to say it will be a significant event for the country, despite the unusual backdrop of pandemic-related restrictions. And I daresay I will tune in on Saturday to watch at least part of the service.
The funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021) is due to take place on Saturday, the 17th of April 2021. The event will be televised in the UK and around the world. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I’m a huge fan of Star Trek – which you probably know if you’re a regular around here! What would become the Star Trek franchise was born out of the space race of the 1960s; the incredible excitement of launching rockets, sending human beings into space, and the Apollo programme that would eventually send Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the moon in July 1969.
It’s hard to remember now, almost fifty years since mankind last set foot on the moon, but the pace of technological progress required to get there in the first place was incredible. The Wright brothers made the first ever powered flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle in 1903. Sixty-six years later, Neil Armstrong took that “giant leap for mankind.” In less than the span of a single human lifetime, we went from the horse and cart to the Saturn V rocket.
It’s been more than fifty years since Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the surface of the moon.
This was the world my parents’ generation grew up in. My father would’ve been in his late twenties when the first moon landing happened, and like practically everyone his age he can remember that event vividly. My grandfather, on the other hand, could distinctly remember the excitement he and his schoolfriends felt at seeing an automobile – a rarity when he was a child.
For all of the monumental accomplishments made in the field of space exploration in my lifetime, nothing compares to landing on the moon, launching the first satellite, or sending the first people to space. And that’s for a pretty simple – yet devastating – reason: we don’t do those kind of big missions any more. The space race ended, and with it the investment of governments shrank significantly. The scope of future missions was curtailed, and NASA in particular looked to money-saving measures.
The launch of a Saturn V rocket.
We’ve heard in every decade since the eighties the promise that we’d land humans on Mars within ten years – then the decade draws to a close and the promise is repeated. If you’d spoken to someone of my parents’ generation in the late ’60s, the idea that humanity would still have never gone to Mars – or even left Earth’s orbit – over fifty years later would have seemed utterly absurd! Surely, they felt, the pace of technological change and improvement would simply continue, and with it, more exciting space missions would come.
But the fundamental technologies involved in space travel haven’t really changed. The rockets that launch all of our satellites, probes, and astronauts are based on the same technology that Wernher von Braun created for the V-2 rocket during the Second World War. The engines and reactors powering our probes have hardly changed since the days of the Pioneer and Voyager programmes. When the money dried up, and the impetus pushing humans to explore space also dried up, technology stagnated.
Dr Wernher von Braun (circled) initially developed rockets for Nazi Germany before working for NASA. Photo Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-Anh.023-02 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons
The development of the reusable space shuttle was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allowed for more frequent missions, sending more humans to space and putting up more satellites and probes than ever before. On the other, it limited humanity’s manned missions to Earth orbit only, and restricted the size and weight of those same satellites and probes. The shuttle remained in service for thirty years, and in all of that time, the development of other spacecraft slowed to a crawl.
There are financial and political reasons why this is the case, especially in the United States. For the US government, space exploration is expensive, and thus NASA’s budget is first on the chopping block when savings need to be made! But there are also political reasons – many politicians have promised a return to the moon and further manned missions, yet were unable to deliver due to changes in political control of the White House and Congress.
All of this has contributed to a sense that I have, as a non-scientist and layman, that space exploration has lost much of its excitement.
The Space Shuttle Enterprise during a test-flight.
The recent landing of the Perseverance Rover on Mars kind of encapsulated this, and is what prompted me to write this piece. Because as amazing an accomplishment as Perseverance’s successful landing was, it’s an almost-identical vehicle to Curiosity – a rover which has been on Mars, sending back data and photos since 2012.
From a scientist’s point of view, the two rovers may have different equipment. Perseverance may be able to conduct experiments that Curiosity couldn’t, and that’s fine. As scientific instruments I’m not doubting their merits. But as a layman looking in, we’ve been seeing photos of the barren Martian landscape for decades, and in high-definition for almost ten years. It’s pretty much a given that Mars once held liquid water and some forms of bacteria, even if the “smoking gun” evidence has yet to be found, so even if Perseverance were to conclusively prove that Mars once harboured microscopic life… even that wouldn’t feel all that interesting.
The Perseverance Rover recently landed on Mars.
The same applies to manned missions. No human has left Earth’s orbit in my lifetime. Manned missions to “space” today take humans to the barest edge of what we could reasonably call “space” – a few hundred miles above our planet’s surface, locked in orbit. The International Space Station, like the space shuttle before it, may be a wonderful engineering accomplishment, and its experiments may achieve interesting results for scientists, but after more than twenty years of continuous occupation of the ISS, it’s not exactly exciting is it?
The last time I felt truly awed by a space mission was New Horizons’ flyby of Pluto in 2015. Seeing images of a planet – or dwarf planet, to give Pluto its official designation – that had never been visited before was genuinely interesting. New Horizons completed the set – all nine planets that I learned about in school had now been visited and photographed by human space probes. That was an interesting moment.
Pluto in true colour, as seen by the New Horizons probe.
I’m increasingly sceptical, though, that any manned mission in the years to come will recapture that feeling. We’ve heard every few years that a manned mission to Mars is in the planning stages, but so far it’s never happened. There are certainly still technical and medical issues to overcome with such an endeavour, such as the long-term effects of low gravity on human bodies and the not-so-easy feat of constructing a large enough and powerful enough spacecraft to make such a journey. I doubt we’ll see it before the most-recent promised date of 2030.
Nor does a return to the moon seem to be on the agenda – again, despite promises to the contrary. The United States had talked about a manned mission sometime this decade, but nothing seems to have been done to further that objective in a long time; NASA’s “back to the moon” web page hasn’t been updated in several years, and I haven’t heard any talk of the proposed mission in a long time.
NASA’s “back to the moon” web page.
So we’re left with more missions to Earth orbit and probes to places we’ve already been. Nothing about that inspires me right now, and the missions that humanity sends into space have become mundane and routine. Perhaps that’s a comment on how we’ve become a spacefaring species: that rocket launches which would have drawn huge attention in years past are now considered dull. But I think it’s also a comment on how space exploration has lost some of its focus and impetus, with missions opting to stay in – relatively speaking, of course – “safe” territory.
As we come to learn more about space and our place in it, the expectation from decades past that we’d be up there exploring it has failed to come to pass. We’ve discovered thousands of planets orbiting stars in our galaxy, yet we have no way to ever practically visit them. We’ve sent countless rockets up into space to undertake a variety of missions, yet never tried to develop an alternate method of propulsion or getting into space. Because the fundamental technologies underlying our space missions haven’t been replaced, space exploration itself has kind of stagnated.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket uses the same basic technology as the V-2 did in the ’40s. Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Zoe Thacker.
As a kid I can remember wanting to be an astronaut and having a fascination with all things space. In the late ’80s and ’90s it seemed that there was still the potential to keep exploring and do bigger and better things – even if that potential had gone unrealised for twenty years or more. But it never came to pass, and I find it quite sad in a way that no human has walked on the moon, or even left Earth orbit, in my entire lifetime.
Perseverance landed on Mars a few weeks ago, and I have no doubt that it will send back data and images that will be of interest to scientists. It may even make the long-awaited breakthrough regarding ancient microbial life on the red planet. But as I look in as a layman, I can’t help but feel that I want to see something else. Why not go to Venus, to Mercury, to the moons of Jupiter? Why not send a probe to visit Neptune or Uranus, neither of which have been visited since the Voyager probes flew past them in the ’80s?
Perseverance at NASA prior to travelling to Mars.
Above all, our goal should be to send humans out into space, pushing the boundaries of science and technology to go where no man has gone before. And there’s the rub. We’re sending probes where probes have already gone before. Rovers to planets where rovers have already gone before… and are still actively exploring. Humans are going to a space station where more than 200 people have gone before. More than 550 humans have spent time in Earth orbit. It’s beginning to stretch the truth to call the most recent ones “pioneers.”
There are some interesting-sounding missions on the horizon, including planned missions to Saturn’s moon Titan, flybys of asteroids, and the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be an improvement over the decades-old Hubble Space Telescope and may potentially help scientists learn more about the formation of galaxies and stars. But there aren’t any manned missions I can feel excited about yet – and as I said I’ll be sceptical of any mission claiming to send humans anywhere other than the ISS until the rocket is on the launchpad and the astronauts are suited up. We’ve been down this road too many times for me to have any confidence, I’m afraid.
I know how this article comes across, and it’s for that reason I didn’t want to publish it immediately after Perseverance landed on Mars. That is undeniably an accomplishment, one which the team can and should take pride in. And as I keep saying, I’m not a scientist. These missions achieve a lot from a scientific standpoint, bringing in a lot of data about different aspects of the cosmos. The data we gain from missions like Perseverance, for example, will hopefully further inform a future manned mission to Mars.
The fact that we have so much technology in space, and that we see so many rocket launches that they don’t even make the news any more are accomplishments. Humanity’s space infrastructure may not have developed in the way I would have wanted, or in the way people of my parents’ generation may have expected in the aftermath of the moon landings, but we have achieved a lot. None of that should be in dispute, and that isn’t what I’m trying to say in this article.
The International Space Station over Florida.
Space exploration isn’t just about raw data and scientific interest. It needs to be inspirational, calling out to future generations of scientists and astronauts to say “hey, look at this absolutely amazing thing we’ve done.” And for me, that inspiring aspect hasn’t been present for a while. The decisions made going back fifty years or more to focus on Earth orbit and unmanned probes to Mars at the expense of other destinations has led space exploration to feel boring by 2021. I think that’s a shame, but I also worry that if that inspirational aspect remains lost, we may never get it back. If nobody cares about going into space because the things we do in space have already been done before, the resultant loss of interest will mean future generations won’t even try to develop new technologies or push forward to new destinations.
Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. And with space exploration having become a luxury rather than a necessity, there has been no real drive toward creating new and better ways of doing it. Why spend time, money, and resources inventing some kind of anti-gravity thruster when chemical rockets from the 1940s still work? But without that need, that drive, I really do believe we’ve seen space technology stagnate and fail to improve.
The Nazi V-2 rocket (modern replica pictured) was the first truly successful long-range rocket. Photo Credit: Lars Aronsson, CC SA 1.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
None of these things are easy, and it’s outstanding in many ways that we’re in as good a position as we are in terms of space exploration and space technology. But I can’t be the only one who feels this way. There hasn’t been a truly pioneering manned mission since we last went to the moon in the early ’70s, and when we’re sending probes and rovers to planets that have seen probes and rovers visit on a number of previous occasions… let’s just say that the first time is always interesting, but each subsequent one draws less and less attention and excitement.
The sad reality, I suppose, is that there isn’t any compelling reason to go to space beyond the thrill of exploring it. And thrills don’t pay the bills! We have all of the resources we need here on Earth – at least in the short-to-medium term – and the expense of doing something commercial in space, like mining or collecting resources, versus the potential profit seems to rule it out. Space is hard to commercialise right now, and thus we seem not to be as interested as we were in decades past.
The planet Uranus – last visited by a human probe in 1986.
SpaceX, the most successful commercial space company, makes its money by launching satellites and other missions in Earth’s orbit – as well as from the upcoming Starlink satellite internet service. That aspect of space can and has been commercialised. But the rest of it – the moon, the asteroids, the planets, and beyond – are currently beyond our reach, at least in terms of a cost-to-profit ratio. It falls solely to government-sponsored agencies, then, to engage in exploration.
I always keep my fingers crossed for interesting and exciting news from space. And it isn’t all doom and gloom; there have been some interesting events, such as the recent transit of ʻOumuamua – which may have been the first interstellar object ever detected. But even then, I’m left with a sense of a missed opportunity. We didn’t send a probe to investigate ʻOumuamua because we couldn’t. We lacked the technology to catch up to the fast-moving object, and thus we’ll never know for certain exactly what it was or what it looked like.
Will we put humans back on the moon – or even on Mars – in the next few years, or even in my lifetime? I can’t answer that question with any certainty any more, and having been let down so many times, I don’t think I’ll believe it until I see the astronauts strapped into their seats on the launchpad. I want space to be interesting, for humans to push the boundaries and strike out into the great unknown. And I want probes to do the same, visiting distant parts of the solar system in the name of exploration. Revisiting Mars and the ISS may provide interesting scientific opportunities, but speaking for myself as a layman, these things no longer hold my interest. Space exploration has become boring.
Some images and artwork courtesy of NASA and/or Wikimedia Commons. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I watch at least one video on YouTube practically every day, and there are a few channels that I regularly stay up-to-date with. There are some great, well-produced videos, mini-documentaries, and short films on almost any topic you can think of – including a growing number of Star Trek channels, which is great to see! But we’re off-topic already. YouTube itself runs adverts on most channels and many of the videos on its platform, and that’s one aspect of the question I’m going to ask today. But there’s another, and it’s one that primarily affects channels when they reach a certain size: paid sponsorships.
I’ve talked before about paid reviews on YouTube, which is a slimy practice that needs to be abolished. But this article isn’t about what specifically is being advertised or even the way in which YouTube channels handle what products and services they choose to associate with. Rather it’s a simple question: what is the right ratio of advert to video? Or to put it another way: how much of the runtime of a video can and should comprise sponsorships and other advertising?
Getting the balance right between advertising and content is difficult for some YouTube channels.
This question was prompted by a video I watched recently – and no, I’m not telling you which one as that would be unfair. This article is not intended to single out any one individual YouTube channel for criticism; it’s a common enough problem across the platform. The video I watched clocked in at just over seven minutes long, which is about average for the channel in question, and because I’m a huge nerd as you well know, it was about trains.
The channel in question runs ads, and as such I was forced to sit through a pre-roll advert before the video played. Luckily this only lasted a few seconds, and while it is somewhat outside the channel’s control, the fact that YouTube shows ads is another layer in answering my question as we’ll see in a moment. After the pre-roll ad, the video began. But of the seven-minute video, the first minute-and-a-half was entirely dedicated to the aforementioned paid sponsorship – this time for a VPN service. 90 seconds may not seem awfully long, and in the grand scheme of things it isn’t – but in a video this short, 90 seconds is already more than 20% of the total runtime.
And that wasn’t all. After the main portion of the video had concluded, I was surprised to see the timer was sitting only at the 6:15 mark. The remaining 45 seconds of the video were dedicated to the YouTuber plugging their Patreon account (where fans can pay monthly to support the channel) as well as another reminder to sign up for the crummy VPN service that was sponsoring the video. That means that, of the seven minutes of total video time, two-and-a-quarter minutes were taken up with advertising. That’s practically one-third of the total runtime of the video, without even accounting for the pre-roll ad. To me that’s just too much.
Everyone is trying to make money – understandably so.
In a way we’re spoilt by the internet offering so much ad-free content. Netflix, Paramount+, Amazon Prime Video, and other streaming services generally don’t run any ads at all, and compared to broadcast television, which takes frequent and long ad breaks, online content is pretty consumer-friendly. But that doesn’t mean we should give content creators a free pass or let things slide when they go too far.
Even in the United States, where the rules around advertising on television are lax compared to the UK, no television channel is dedicating one-third of its time to ad breaks. When I lived in the United States in the mid-2000s, prime time television shows would show around 15 minutes of ads per hour – which is, if you’re quick with the maths, one-quarter of their time.
Older, more established YouTube channels tend to have a better handle on this problem, having worked out the right balance between making money and what their audience is willing to put up with. Thus it tends to be newer YouTubers, or channels which have only recently become popular, that fall prey to excessive advertising and overly-long sponsorship slots, at least in my limited experience with the platform.
This issue seems to affect newer YouTube channels more.
I don’t want to begrudge anyone making money, especially in the current economic climate. But there are good and bad ways to go about doing so, and there are good and bad ways to handle advertising and sponsorships. I don’t think I’d be alone in saying that a video which is one-third advert is too much, and this can become costly for YouTubers. They can lose subscribers, receive dislikes, receive negative comments and feedback, etc. It’s not uncommon to see comments calling out a YouTube video for dedicating too much time to advertising, and negative comments can be hurtful and even offputting.
Some videos can make the actual topic feel secondary, as if the video and indeed the whole channel only exist for the purpose of advertising. The content underneath the ads is what viewers come to YouTube for, and when that feels unbalanced it becomes very offputting. Whatever trust may exist between a YouTube channel and its audience becomes strained. This isn’t just the case when a YouTube channel is advertising a product or service close to the subject of the video, either.
Striking the right balance and getting the right advert-to-video ratio is important for any amateur on YouTube who hopes to make money on the platform. It’s worth any aspiring YouTuber taking a look at established channels to see how they handle things rather than launching headfirst into a sponsorship agreement without thinking it through. In the case we looked at, the two-and-a-quarter minutes of advertising would have felt far less egregious on a video that was twenty minutes long, so as I alluded to it’s not the raw length of time spent on advertising that’s the issue. Instead it’s making sure to get the right balance between time spent on advertising and time spent on the actual video. How much time in seconds or minutes to spend on advertising will depend on the channel and the length of video that the YouTuber intends to produce.
Being offered a large sum of money by advertisers can be very tempting to aspiring YouTubers.
As a good rule of thumb, I would suggest no YouTube video should try to pack more than 10% of its total runtime with advertising, and I would include in that plugging Patreon, PayPal donations, YouTube channel memberships, and the like. YouTube has recently become more aggressive with its own advertising, and it’s not uncommon to see two pre-roll ads now, as well as ads that run in the middle of a video, so YouTubers should try to take that into account when adding in their own ads.
It’s not always easy to make money on YouTube, and I’m sure that sponsorships are a very tempting prospect for an up-and-coming channel. But YouTubers in that position need to be very careful that they aren’t putting off their audience and potentially seeing those subscriber numbers and total watch hours drop as a result of being too aggressive. Usually this problem corrects itself; if a YouTube channel goes too hard and too fast on the paid sponsorships, they wise up either because they lose viewers or because of the backlash it generates. But it’s something to be aware of for anyone starting a YouTube channel and intending to pursue it as a money-making endeavour.
So what’s the tl;dr? In my opinion it’s about 10% or less. 90% or more of proper video content, 10% or less of adverts and self-promotion. Shorter videos in particular need to be careful with this, as it’s on shorter videos where I’ve found that the balance has not been correctly struck more often than not.
Sorry for the rant, but this is something that was really bugging me today for some reason!
Some stock photos used here are courtesy of Pixabay and Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
It’s been almost a full year since the coronavirus pandemic hit the UK in a major way. In late March last year I was advised by the National Health Service that I’m classified as “clinically extremely vulnerable” to COVID-19, and more likely to suffer serious complications from this nasty illness. That didn’t come as a surprise to me – and if you’ve been a regular reader here on the website you’ll know I’m in generally poor health. Because of my pre-existing health conditions I was put into one of the NHS’ priority groups to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
At the end of February I was given my vaccine appointment, and I promptly attended it. The UK’s vaccine rollout has been one of the best in the world, and the NHS deserves a huge amount of credit for the way they’ve handled things. Though there can be reasons to criticise the bureaucracy at the NHS sometimes, there can be no denying that, in this case, having a centralised system has helped immensely. Once the NHS got the ball rolling on vaccinating folks late last year, it became an unstoppable juggernaut, and the UK looks to be on course to have vaccinated everyone who could be vulnerable to coronavirus in short order, with the remainder of the population also vaccinated in time for summer.
I’ve had my first dose of the vaccine!
My vaccination appointment went incredibly smoothly. I arrived on time, and was guided to the right entrance to the health centre by one of a number of volunteers. Once inside I gave my name and date of birth, and was handed a card which noted the batch number of the vaccine. From there I waited in the queue for less than five minutes, at which point I was ushered into a room, answered a couple of questions, and within literally 30 seconds of sitting down the needle was in my arm. And that was that. A very efficient process indeed!
Nobody likes getting an injection, and I will admit that my arm was a little sore in the hours after my appointment. But feeling the needle go into my arm was actually an incredible moment. After a year of shielding myself at home, not interacting with friends or family except online, and not being able to go anywhere or do anything, it was cathartic. It felt like the first step toward a return to normal life, and after the year we’ve all had, I’m more than ready for that!
I wasn’t sure whether or not to share my vaccine experience. This website is really a forum for me to discuss entertainment topics, so it isn’t really a good fit, nor is it something I would usually talk about. But unfortunately the coronavirus pandemic has seen a number of conspiracy theories propagated, including an expansion of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. In whatever small way I can, I wanted to lend my voice and share my experience to re-emphasise that this vaccine is safe and to push back against anti-vaccine narratives.
In some communities, the reappearance of previously-eradicated diseases like measles, rubella, and even polio is directly and unquestionably attributable to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and many of these same conspiracy theory proponents have begun arguing against the COVID-19 vaccine. This is incredibly dangerous.
Protesters in the UK during the pandemic.
Vaccines don’t just work on an individual basis, they work en masse. The more people who get vaccinated, the less chance a disease can break out because human-to-human transmission becomes impossible. Vaccines are not 100% effective on a personal level; they don’t provide everyone with protection due to various factors. It’s therefore up to all of us to protect one another. Receiving the vaccine is about so much more than just protecting yourself – it’s a civic responsibility to protect everyone in society, including those with serious illnesses or compromised immune systems who cannot receive the vaccine for themselves.
This is what many anti-vaccine folks seem to miss – and indeed what many anti-mask or anti-lockdown folks have missed throughout the pandemic. So let’s be very clear: it isn’t just about you. The actions that we take at a moment like this have the potential to affect everyone in society, and the effectiveness of any vaccination programme relies on as many people as possible receiving their dose when it’s their turn.
The sooner we’re all vaccinated, the sooner life can return to normal.
I’m not the only one to have been vaccinated. My elderly parents both received their first doses a few weeks ago, and a number of other friends and relatives have had theirs too. Nobody I’m aware of suffered any ill effects, and I can say with confidence that the vaccine is safe. I know there’s a lack of trust in our governments, leaders, politicians, and even scientists, and part of the reason why conspiracy theories in a general sense have become accepted by some folks is because of that mistrust. I don’t know how to counter that in the long run, nor what the consequences may be.
All I can say today is that I went to my appointment. I took the jab. I got vaccinated. There were no ill effects, no complications. The vaccine is safe, and I’m not saying that because of the result of a scientific study or because a politician said so. That’s my own lived experience. I truly hope that when it’s your turn, you’ll get vaccinated too. Then we can put all of this nonsense behind us and get back to living our lives.
There are several different COVID-19 vaccines available, with more on the way. When you can expect to receive your dose will depend on where you live, how old you are, your general state of health, and other factors. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 