To Take Their Breath Away (Spiritus Eorum Auferte), 36 x 48 acrylic.
It is difficult to know how to address the current situation, how to speak out against the police violence and purposeful escalation of violent action against peaceful protesters, angry protesters, and protesters in the street speaking out against police brutality. They are often met with police brutality.
I’ve watched too many videos where police drag a protester into the middle or catch one on the side and physically assault them while they are “arresting” them. All the other officers crowd around the officer beating someone to make sure no one else interferes. They all cover each other.
It’s protected assault.
Officers have “qualified immunity” from work related violence that they do as part of their job. If they can say they needed to do it, then they can do it. They never have to be held criminally liable. Oh they MAY get fired, but then transferred to a new precinct, a new city, ready to start the abuse over again.
The Blue Code, the Blue Shield, Blue wall of silence, or other names, is an unwritten code of conduct that police officers buy into—protecting each other’s abusive or illegal activity. Even if they go in with the best of intentions, they will end up following the code and not turning in other officers, not speaking out, for fear of what might happen to them.
“Portrait of the Columbus Ohio Police Department, 2020,” acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48.
This was written a few nights after the event happened in 2020. It’s pretty raw, looking back at it 3 years later, but I’m going to leave it raw. Anything else wouldn’t be honest. (5/17/2023)
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#BlackLivesMatter— At the end of my statement there are Columbus area black artists to follow, and a long list of video links to the Columbus Police using violence on Peaceful Protesters. #WeBearWitness
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Normally I do joyful paintings about queer heroes and monsters, about large hairy men in love, or portraits of friends and family, but last Friday, protests for racial justice began in Columbus, Ohio during a worldwide pandemic. The combination of these two things prevented me from participating in the protest, as I’m immuno-compromised. And so, like for the last two and a half months, I was sheltering in place but watching the videos of my friends and fellow Columbus-residents as their peaceful protests were met with violent, overreactive police retribution. They were sprayed, gassed, shot at, beaten, arrested during a peaceful protest meant to highlight the problem with police brutality. Well, nothing highlights police brutality like more police brutality.
For one protester who made a video, there was a moment all the violence started: when a police officer socked a protester. When the protesters objected to being assaulted by shouting, they were all sprayed with pepper spray. (Bryan Battle Jr video is also linked below)
Video after video surface from the #columbusprotest showing the Columbus Police using excessive force and assaulting citizens of Columbus (whose taxes pay for police and whose right it is to protest injustice–and whose taxes pay out the settlements in law suits made against the police.)
Infuriated by the videos and my inability to be there to support the movement, I did what I could. I took a screenshot of the video and created this painting.
As most people know, on June 1st, Netflix decided not to renew Sense8. Fans of the Wachowski Sisters + J Michael Straczynski show, a show that weaves a global narrative to tell a very human story of eight people sharing their minds, knowledge, and empathy, were devastated that the story would not have a third season. Many knew that it only had one more season of story, but Netflix decided not to renew. Then the fanbase rallied and wrote and tweeted and called out! and helped show-writers garner a 2 hour special for Sense8! Amazing!
I am so happy that we get 2 hours to wrap up Sense8, and don’t take this blogpost here as less than gratitude for that 2 hours. But I’d like to make a bigger case for you–a case you haven’t heard–about giving Sense8 a whole season based on what might be good for Netflix, not just for fans.
While there has been speculation as to why the show was not renewed, that’s speculation. Netflix spends a lot of money trying to find hit series, and sometimes a good series doesn’t find the right market. When the cancellation happened, there was plenty of anger towards Netflix, and, in the moment, I even threatened to dump Netflix. But I love Stranger Things, and I watch Star Trek, Daredevil, Luke Cage, etc. It would be hard for me to dump Netflix for good. I know, they’re counting on that–they’ve made us LOVE this service. Okay.
Instead of eight negative reasons to renew Sense8, I want to give 8 positive reasons to renew Sense8 for a whole last season. I want to give them something they can go to the marketing table with and say—“Let’s do one more season.” (Please especially consider #7)
Ultimately, right decisions aren’t made because of negative consequences but because the positive consequences are stronger. We aren’t charitable because of Fear of Hell or Fear of Bad Publicity. We are charitable because we want to help.
Why Netflix Would Want to Complete a Third Season of Sense8
1. NETFLIX IS COMMITTED TO COMPLETION: Sense8 has exactly ONE more season. It’s a three season arc. You renew that last season, you are a hero, and the story is complete, and people bingewatch the three seasons for years afterwards on Netflix. They will come to Netflix for those three seasons. You’re not having to commit to an unknown number of seasons, or risking anything AFTER this season. You already committed two seasons and they were amazing, and fans loved them, and they are almost home-free. You create NEW fans by following through on your series. But MORE people will become afraid to watch or commit to a new series if the series could be cancelled before it’s finished. The more unfinished series, the more Netflix becomes untrustworthy for a new viewer. The positive spin: you complete series, and they can be assured that when they watch a series on Netflix, especially with the millions of fans this series has created, that it will have closure–that series runners will know ahead of time that their series must establish closure. This one is close to being finished.
2. NETFLIX EDUCATES ITS VIEWERSHIP ABOUT VIEWERSHIP. You teach Netflix viewers about Viewership using Sense8. Part of the shock of this announcement was that viewers thought that their fan base was enough. We don’t get to watch the Viewership numbers like you do, so we can’t tell when to rally, or how we’re doing, or if we’re about to fall. It’s a bit unfair to a very large group of fans to say that their numbers are not enough. What kinds of viewership help make your decisions? Do you need a certain number every week? And how do you calculate when you drop 10 episodes over a weekend? How many times should we view it? How many tweets do you need? How many blogposts analyzing the show? If you give us those numbers, WE CAN HELP SAVE THE SHOWS WE LOVE. I guarantee that the fanbase for Sense8 is the most dedicated fan base you’ve ever had (more on that below). But telling us to love a show and then, when it’s not good enough, taking it from us without telling us how to celebrate and support it correctly can be very bad in the long run–it leaves a bad taste in fans’ mouths. Netflix needs to teach its viewers what matters to save a show–how can we love a show enough to keep it if we don’t know what you need? If not, fans won’t try a show till a second season is guaranteed…or may just not try it unless you do what you did with The Crown, and guarantee 6 seasons to tell that arc.
I first saw this picture through Natalie Laurel on Facebook. She advocates turning the swastikas we are seeing into other things.
It was 1978. I was in fourth grade. I wanted to belong to something so badly. I was invited into my first club at school. Now, understand, our family had been Navy for 20 years, so in my young life, we moved around a lot–every year, sometimes. I had already lived 6 places on two coasts, and I was 9. So being invited into a club was a huge thing! It meant I was accepted–even as an outsider–even in a new small town in Missouri. A beautiful town.
I don’t know if it was a joke played on me, or not, this club–this acceptance. If it was real, then it gives me chills now. “Yes, you can be in our club,” an older boy said, someone who was in seventh grade, maybe. He was so tall. And I was so hungry for acceptance. He knelt down and he drew something on the front of my shoes. The new symbol for our club, he said. When I went home that day, I said, “Mommy, I’m in a club! I’m in a club!” And I must have been beaming with that acceptance.
My mother took one look at my shoes–the only pair of shoes I had for school because we didn’t have a lot of money. And it was in ink, this thing. The boy had drawn a swastika on each of my shoes. I thought it was a cool club symbol because I was young, but my mother saw it for what it was. She was shocked. She knelt down to look at it. She could not erase it–she must have known it would show up anyway. So she carefully made it a box, a four squared box. I was upset that she had done that–at first. I don’t remember if I cried, or tried to stop her–She was ruining the club symbol! She was marking on my shoes! — I’m sure I put up a little fight. “No honey. Not this symbol,” was what she said to me. “I don’t want you in that club.” I don’t know if she explained to me what that symbol meant–I think she must have tried. But I can’t remember. I did it for my mom more than for my fourth grade understanding of hate symbols. It meant so much to my mom, that I didn’t pursue that club. I don’t even remember if the club was really a club, or some cruel joke they were playing on me. I never saw any club meetings, any groups with swastikas on their arms or shoes. Never.
My shoes had a foursquare box on them for the rest of fourth grade. I made up a new club for people with glasses, and I forgot about the old club. We had three guys in the glasses club.
It’s our job to not let little children (or anyone) have to see that symbol everywhere. Even if they don’t understand why. This symbol is getting a revival. If you see it, be vandals and change it. Don’t let that symbol stay. It’ll burn into the walls. It’ll burn into our minds. Turn the swastikas into boxes, Windows Logos, or brightly-colored boxes. Turn them into pinwheels, gift boxes, chessboards.
Turn them into windows that look out onto a better America.
*thank you, Mom.
(this post was inspired by Natalie Laurel’s Facebook photo of the Windows logo shared by many. I know the original might be photoshopped, but buy a can a paint anyway, eh? )
I would like to see Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963) added to all new Bibles.
I don’t propose this lightly. Three times in the Bible, in three different places, listeners (and they wouldn’t have been readers) are exhorted not to add to, or take away, from specific books. One is about Revelation, one is specifically to the Israelites in Deuteronomy to listen to the law, and the other is in Proverbs: “Every word of God is true….do not add to his words, lest you be proved a liar.” I think it’s safe to say that I won’t propose adding any new words of God to the Bible. I’m advocating something less radical. If we can have letters from Paul, we can have letters from Martin.
It was the only airplane to emit a hijacked signal on 9/11/2001. It was heading to New York City, from Seoul, via Anchorage Alaska. Fighter jets were scrambled. A whole city, Whitehorse, was given 15 minutes warning that a hijacked plane was heading to their small airport, an airport just above the center of town. Every school was evacuated, parents were told to pick up their kids, and a giant 747 escorted by jets whose missiles were locked on target came into view.
Max Fraser, local Whitehorse filmmaker, has put together one of the most intriguing “untold” stories of 9/11 in his documentary, Never Happen Here: the Whitehorse 9/11 story. Only a few hours after four planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and in Western Pennsylvania, Whitehorse is told that a hijacked plane is on its way to their city. They have 15 minutes to get ready.
Imagine the panic, after watching everything happen in New York that day, hearing that it’s coming to your town in 15 minutes. No one else got any warning that planes would be falling from the sky. The morning of 9/11 was a surprise–there was no anticipation, no expectation. While nothing can take away from the horror of 9/11 in the United States, or can compare to the tragedy of that event, Whitehorse’s story has an interesting angle no other story has. It is because of the horror of 9/11 that Whitehorse had something to fear. A disaster of 9/11 proportions was coming our way, only a few hours after we’d been shocked watching the panic and destruction hit New York City. What would you do if you knew a 9/11 was coming to your city?
This question “Is Star Trek Reckoning Real?” was googled by someone and led to my website. There’s really another question that’s implicit, I think and that is “Would the Creators Really Want to Screw Up Star Trek by letting Conservatives wreak havoc in the Star Trek Universe?”
Yes.
We love it when our favorite stories take a turn for the worse–where our complacency is shaken, our values are threatened, adversity gets the upper hand, only to show us how much we truly have taken things for granted.
Fiction is all about making it bad for your heroes. And making them fight hard–because it gives us strength to fight hard.
We need to see a few seasons where the “good” of Star Trek has to fight to regain balance. The Federation has gotten the upper hand. Chances with Enterprise were lost to play with a universe without the Federation. Oh, in Star Trek series, we had a few episodes from the Mirror Universe, but even that slowly spoiled because each episode in the Mirror Universe actually redeemed a character or two who were going to be pivotal in turning the “dark” parts–the disorder– to order once again. And then the mirror universe would be just like us…ho hum. What if we lingered in that disorder? This is what Reckoning explores.
Oh there have been times when good guys rebel against the Federation. Why is it that the “good” Star Trek characters sneak around and are able to commandeer vessels (Kirk, Scotty, Picard), disobey orders (everyone), grab things they aren’t supposed to have (Chakotay, Riker, Janeway) and go off and do something illegal for a greater good (which no one in the Federation knows about)? Why is Starfleet so easy to outwit?
The “order” in Star Trek relies on the shared concept of the “honor system”— but when good characters want to steal things, disobey, etc. they seem to be able to do it because no one in Star Trek is ready for that. And secondly, because the plot calls for it. We need Janeway to steal the time machine doo-hickey, or Kirk to steal the Enterprise…. because otherwise we don’t have an episode.
Fergus, the D’Mi, the whole grouping of conservative captains who no longer have faith in the Federation’s president–who see themselves as vigilantes, or martyrs, or heroes—determined to save the Universe, or their values, at any cost— these people are interesting. Villains are far more interesting, at times, than heroes who can be painted too “good.” Next Generation characters weren’t very complex, or if they were unstable, they were restored by episode’s end (except DS9–which was by far the riskiest ST) Star Trek hit the reset button every episode (or at the very least, at the end of every two -parter). Star Trek, by JJ Abrams, did us a favor and did not hit the reset button, thank God.
Now we have a series that shows that the “values” of Star Trek can be hijacked by well-meaning people who believe they are on a mission. I think this is a logical next step for Star Trek. Reckoning will show how easy it is to believe what you have been told, it would give a believable “other side” to all the issues. Instead of showing us what is right by demonstration— it would show us what is right by having to fight for it, and failing.
Captains modeled on Palin, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Beck would be interesting–if only to see what they would do with something like the Federation. How would they operate within it? When would they dismantle it? When would they circumvent it? Would the Federation be able to squelch them? The Maquis was a great subplot, and I wish they had done more there… certainly Tom Riker (one of my favorite characters) would have been interesting to follow. But the Maquis had one goal–not a whole different ideology. I want to see that people in the Federation don’t all think alike…. they don’t all get along.
Think of what happened to the West Wing when the Republicans got in power….
So, creators of Star Trek, when will we have a Reckoning? When will we see what we loved threatened? Will you create people who will fight to re-balance it? In the same vein as BSG—a show that allowed characters to be less than perfect, and which allowed the bad guys to have the upper hand–can you show us a universe where it will take us seven seasons to get it back on track again?
Please, finally, let the Dragon out and let us see what the Federation will do! 🙂
Is Star Trek Reckoning for real or not? Confirm this series.
Writers are scrambling to capture and transform opportunities as they arise for developing Sarah Palin’s Star Trek role. She provides them every day with new fodder and storylines that enhance a brilliantly conceived new series, and new direction, for the Star Trek franchise.
Because of my writer contacts with the new series, I get leaks now and again and this is straight from the writer’s War Room (as they call it). The first scripts for Star Trek: Reckoning, the new Star Trek series coming from Fox/Paramount this Fall, feature Captain Nalia Fergus (Sarah Palin) of the USS Steadfast, and a CGI-created polar bear first officer, Commander Nuuk. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blogpost, the polar bear doesn’t realize that Fergus used to hunt bears like him for sport.
I’m not allowed to put any of the script online for copyright reasons, but the episode entitled “Ain’t No Love for Mama Grizzlies” has the Steadfast‘s Captain and First Officer in a holodeck hunt of each other, and both of them have guns! I kid you not.
Here’s the breakdown. Fergus, in a bid to coerce women of the Federation to rise up and reject the Betazed President of the Federation, and his stubbornly peaceful policies, has issued a statement, using the image of her first officer, Nuuk, as an example of the kind of “bear” she is, the kind of “mama grizzly” she believes all conservative women are.
When Nuuk receives a message from enemies of Fergus–pictures of her with the skins of bears, hunting bears, when the facts start rolling in about how she really feels about bears–the Truth about Fergus’ relationship to Grizzlies, bears and other wildlife: she’d originally been part of a group that wanted to offer hunts, and drill for oil, on Nuuk’s own planet–for her own profit!–completely against the Federation’s Planetary Protection Act on Class L planet, Arctos 3– well, let’s say he’s not pleased. The fact that she’s using his image–an image she’d thought of more as throw rug than sentience–to promote her cause (even if it is to protect the Federation from the Reckoning) is more than he can handle, and he lures her to the Holodeck for a showdown.
Well, you can’t shoot your captain, and you can’t shoot your first officer— just not in the Star Trek rulebook. What Fergus doesn’t know is that Nuuk has sympathetic friends in Starfleet, and the episode hints that he may even be a counterspy on the Steadfast, working for the Federation to keep an eye on Fergus. While he distracts Fergus on the “hunt,” information about Fergus’ real feelings and real decisions about conservative women get sent to Federation media outlets.
This all happens during the Holodeck hunt–to keep Fergus from defending herself and allow the word to get out. Unfortunately, giving away the ending of the episode–SPOILER–Nuuk is tranquilized, and put in the brig for several episodes. But, this episode ends with the truth coming out, at least in a small way about Nalia Fergus and her movement. Writers tell me this is episode 4 or 5 of the series.
What I find so fascinating about Fergus’ character is her distorted belief in herself as saviour–and yet, I can’t help but believe that there’s a grab for power in there somewhere too. That it’s very little about saving the Federation, and more about using the Reckoning–this dream of disaster–as a way to wrench power and control away from the Federation through fear. Such a master at projection, Nalia Fergus may actually bring on the very Reckoning she claims to be saving the Federation from.
Writers praise Palin: “As a writer on the show, I can’t say how much I’m thankful for Sarah Palin’s assistance in helping us flesh out this character. Every day, we’re all watching her Twitter, and reading every statement she puts out. We sit around the War Room and translate that–nearly verbatim–into a Star Trek episode. She’s a gift to the series.”
I find this show completely fascinating—and it hasn’t even been broadcast! Who’da thought that a conservative take on Star Trek would provide so many compelling storylines?
— on a different note, the start date for the series has been moved back to October because of Sarah Palin speaking engagements piling up this summer. She’s still filming when she can, I’ve heard, but she’s a woman on the move, a “pink elephant” parading* across the stages she’s set in America, and the Series just has to wait her out.
Oddly, Palin’s conjuring up women as “pink elephants” refers back to the drunken stupor that Dumbo experiences in the Disney movie, “Dumbo”–is she saying that women marching on Washington is an alcohol-induced halucination? Hmmm. Well, in honor of Palin’s reference to “pink elephants” I give you the original song that was, frankly, frightening for kids back when Dumbo showed in theatres.
Star Trek is enough reason for justifying the Supreme Court decision today, according to once VP nominee Sarah Palin. Poised to become the new captain of the USS Steadfast (in UPN and Fox’s new Star Trek Series–see past entries here and here), Palin gave a speech today where she cited as precedent the popular science fiction series, aired between 1966-1969. “Sidearms protected everyone. Everyone had a phaser. This is the future. So, we thank the judges for remembering not only where we’ve been but where we’re heading,” she said today outside her Alaska home. She showed the crowd her own handgun, which she claims has stopped fourteen robberies, six alone by her next door neighbor, writer Joe McGinniss.
Palin excited the gun rights lobby (which is near frothing already for Palin) by endorsing the Supreme Court decision and by linking it to popular culture. Seventeen unidentified men and women held up their iPhone 4s after having googled “shooting death” to show how many gun death entries are in the news for just today, June 28th. “Those really effective background checks keep guns out of the hands of crazy people!” one of them shouted at Palin’s abrupt press conference. [The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocate for sensible gun laws, cite more than 100,000 people a year are the victims of a shooting]
Palin countered, “If it’s good enough for Star Trek, it’s good enough for the country that will be Star Trek one day. After all, these are Americans in space.”
Bloggers have tried to explain the Federation of Planets to Ms. Palin (as she’s about to become a captain on the new series). She twitters politely, “All captains of the series were American, everyone spoke English, and the military was in charge of ‘exploration.’ This makes it an American ship in space. How much more American can you get than U.S.S.?”
The writers, once thrilled at writing the conservative adventures of rogue captains, were shocked at Ms. Palin’s link-up between Roddenberry’s vision of peace and her own gun-toting agenda. “She’s obviously not familiar with the ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ alternate timeline. Sidearms on the bridge crew were a sign that things had gone bad—not good.”
Palin is certainly a rogue Trek actor for the writers. She has cajoled the writers into scripting outright sedition on the bridge. “This is how real, honest people would talk if their President was a weak-kneed, educated liberal facing this kind of disaster.” She refers to the Reckoning–that portentious, ominous, apocalyptic thing hurtling towards Earth–that is the tension backbone of the new series, Star Trek: Reckoning.
Writers have committed to one season. My inside man in this writing group says, “I don’t think the fans could sustain the series past one season. Just seeing how a conservative rogue group would f**k up the whole Federation would make them cry out for the Reckoning just to clean house.”
Another writer says, “We’re treating it as comedy. And the best thing is that Sarah [Palin] is taking it dead seriously.”
The team of producers and the director, Chris Berman, want it that way. “I think Palin, Gingrich, Cheney, Limbaugh–they’ll be able to pull it off because they believe in their beliefs so much. It won’t even have to be acting. And yeah, I agree with the sentiment of the writers— fans will be torn between which is worse for the Federation–conservatives or a giant meteor, wave, whatever coming to wipe out human civilization. Both alternatives wipe out civilization. It’s really the lady or the tiger, isn’t it?”
About the Trek reference in today’s speech, Berman says, “Any reference to Trek in popular culture helps the show. When we air this series, Palin and the others will have done a huge favor to us by just being themselves and by mentioning the series. We’re trying to give them as much creative control in this as possible. Since we know nothing about what conservatives would actually DO with a starship, we’re learning from them how to go about creating these characters. We’re looking at this as a cultural and creative exchange.”
He added, “Nothing is more alien to us than the Tea Party.”
Note: all content is intended as parody. That said, Star Trek: Reckoning would be very interesting indeed. References to Joe McGinniss in no way implies he is guilty of robbery, only implying that Sarah Palin would think he was.
As a follow up to my last post about Star Trek: Reckoning, the hot, new, nearly top-secret co-produced ST series from Paramount and Fox, none other than Newt Gingrich has come aboard! It’s very rare for working politicians to take time out to create good television for honest folks in the Midwest and the Plains, but it looks like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich will be on board.
From my insider at Paramount, “The producers had actually wanted an actor, at first. Sarah Palin’s the one who pushed the idea of Newt, saying in effect, that he ‘has the chops’.”
I have to say, it’s an inspired choice. Not an actor, but a politician—those are close, so I can see Paramount going for that. But Gingrich is, shall we say, kind of from another era. Most popular from the 90s and the man who brought us the doomed “Contract with America” and subsequently hijacked the presidency of Bill Clinton. Now, I remember that. But I don’t think most people actually remember Newt Gingrich, so it might not be a problem. They won’t confuse his character with any thing of substance he might have done in the past.
Sometimes actors on Star Trek have such long-standing previous sci-fi characters (I’m looking at you Scott Bakula) that viewers can’t see them as something new. I know this hindered my viewing of ST:Enterprise—kept waiting for Al to pop in (although watching Dean Stockwell in BSG, i completely forget he was ever Al on QL). So, it may be that no one actually remembers anything important that Gingrich did, allowing him to kind of slip into this role and establish himself anew. I mean, did anything he did really amount to much? So that might allow him to start over as a character!
Just to recap: Palin will play Capt. Nalia Fergus of the USS Steadfast; she’s part of a group of rogue commanders who believe the dream prediction of the D’mi, that “the Reckoning” will destroy the Federation. Seeing a Federation President they don’t trust, nor believe he can protect everyone, they form an alliance to counter the Reckoning before it happens.
Gingrich will play the D’mi (unnamed as of April 8) on-board the Steadfast, who lives in two worlds at the same time. One is the dream and one is reality. He is constantly unsure which reality he is living in.
“Which makes Gingrich perfect,” my writer friend at Paramount said, “He has a bit of experience nowadays with living in both fantasy and reality.” He’s referring, of course, to Gingrich’s latest gaffe, putting words in Obama’s mouth that he never said. Gingrich’s character will try to give advice to Capt Fergus (Palin) about how to avoid the Reckoning. But he rarely ever sleeps—sleeping triggers the shift to the other reality–and so when he sleeps in one reality, he awakens in the other.
A great tension that the writers are building in is that he will begin to give information that proves false—about halfway through Season One. He will claim that something Fergus has done has altered the future so that a “certain” event won’t happen the same, but in effect, there’s an idea that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t even think that he knows that he lies; he’s a bit overwhelmed by the attention, by the focus, and by his power to direct Fergus, and the ships that follow her.
I’m excited by this new Series. I asked my friend why Paramount is delaying the formal announcement of Star Trek: Reckoning. I’ve already had several people ask me when there will be more confirmed reports–and several people are searching on google for it.
He says, “They’re testing the market right now, seeing what Red State America thinks about the idea. They’ve never done a conservative focused Star Trek like this before. They don’t know if they’ll have the audience. But they’re basing it off of O’Reilly and Beck, Hannity and Coulter, and the current Tea Party constituency. They figure people are tired of the way things have been done–and in that way, might be tired of Star Trek the old way—and want to see an overthrow, a rebellion—at least in science fiction, if they can’t have it in fact.”
I wonder if TV can play on that desire, that hope, of a people to want change so badly that they will accept the fictionalized version.
“Well, you’ve seen The West Wing? That was a George W. Bush era show–don’t tell me that wasn’t fantasy aimed at folks who wanted change!”
He has a point.
What I’m really interested in is this: if the rogue group actually overthrows the Federation, will they make it more vulnerable to everyone else? Will they make alliances with the Romulans? The Borg? Or will they naively think they can do better? Fergus isn’t a seasoned captain; the D’mi doesn’t know what reality looks like; and they’re following a culture that believes in a bad dream…. they are hyping a monster that doesn’t exist.
…will watching ST: Reckoning be akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion?
As most people know, on June 1st, Netflix decided not to renew Sense8. Fans of the Wachowski Sisters + J Michael Straczynski show, a show that weaves a global narrative to tell a very human story of eight people sharing their minds, knowledge, and empathy, were devastated that the story would not have a third season. Many knew that it only had one more season of story, but Netflix decided not to renew. Then the fanbase rallied and wrote and tweeted and called out! and helped show-writers garner a 
I would like to see Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963) added to all new Bibles.
Bear Witness 