FYI Oduntola, I worked for CBS prime time network ages ago. I was in promotions and marketing. You mention the "money people." I have to grin. Show Business is both show and business. The default instinct of all corporations leans on profit. The genius of Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone -- and to much extent Roddenberry -- is Serling hid his social commentary in fantasy/sci-fi stories the network execs were too obtuse to figure out. This was also true of Victor Hugo in his day (Les Miserables, Hunchback of Notre Dame). But as a former CBS marketing head, the irony is by stalling so long to figure out what they're doing, they are losing money, eroding their built-in audience and handicapping the early success and promise of CBS All Access.

Skypower,

I think you are agreeing with my basic premise only giving a monetary justification. I realize the reality of "show biz". I am just saddened by it and pointing out that had those been the primary concerns of Roddenberry, we might not have ANY Star Trek at all, indeed we almost never did. ST was NOT a great commercial success the first go around, however something about the original premise allowed it to succeed. That 'thing' is what I believe the current people behind ST should have faith in, rather than simply putting their fingers in the wind.

"It's a mystery." (from the movie "Shakespeare in Love" )

(from the movie "Shakespeare in Love" )

One of the first movies that comes to mind to return their Oscars how in the hell could this slock have won all those Oscars and in particular best picture is utterly ridiculous.

I thought it was worthy of an Oscar nomination but Saving Private Ryun should have won. At the time, it was widely held Harvey Weinstein bought that Oscar with bribery and influence and outspending everyone on "For your consideration" ads. It wasn't schlock though IMO.

That is my objection to Shakespeare In Love it's it is clearly a movie tailor made to appeal to the Academy Jury but as a movie I found it rather dull and unoriginal.I thought Blanchet should have won and probably Rush but not for his role in SIL but for Elisabeth as for best movie they should have given it to saving Private Ryan or if they had wanted to promote the more (smaller)independent movies could have opted at least to go for some more original movies like Citizen X ,The Big Lebowski,Dark City or Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

I know we've veered way off subject here but a personal anecdote re: Saving Private Ryan. I invited my uncle to see it with me who was a top bazooka soldier during WWII and saw lots of horrific action as depicted in the film. He had a flashback when the German Panzer tanks began approaching the village. The Panzers had a very distinctive squealing sound and the sound was so realistic in the theater, as they got closer and closer my uncle had a panic attack. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. I had to forcefully shake him to snap him out of it.

Well I don't know if your uncle is still Alive Sky but as a citizen of one of the countries your uncle has/had liberated I and and my fellow countrymen want to send our deepest admiration and deepest gratitude to your uncle and the many men like him for liberating us Your Uncle and fellow veterans of WW II will always be welcome in my country and can always can be assured of our utmost respect,gratitude and honour they so much deserve. And various members of my family had to endure and suffer the consequences of being occupied (my grandfather on my mothers side actually briefly fought the Germans during their invasion of my country and later in the war was put into a German detention/work camp for former military personnel and escaped during the last months of the war and had to remain in hiding for the last months also my grandmothers of my mother and father's side,my father,aunt and uncle had suffered during the hunger winter of '44 -'45 and were the welcome recipients of the food drops by plane during operation Manna to relieve the hunger which came not a moment too soon.So I hope this will (or would have) give(n) your uncle some feeling of pride and some relief of the nightmares and trauma's he must have suffered because of that terrible experience and you should be proud of your uncle's courage,commitment and unselfishness to liberate us and every year we honour and remember your countrymen who paid the ultimate price in liberating us and their sacrifice will always be remembered Sky.

As for Saving Private Ryan seeing it in the cinema for the first time I remember myself feeling horrified and anxious after the first 20 minutes,I felt ,like probably some of your countrymen must have felt, this feeling impending moments of carnage and death that could strike like any minute and at random that you feel your self being tense and alert of what might lay ahead and if a movie can give that sort of strong reactions and emotions than the film maker has achieved something I rarely feel watching a movie which is an achievement in itself.

Nexus 71, you brought a tear to my eye. Saving Private Ryan was released 20 years ago can you believe that? I saw it at a special screening at Dreamworks where the sound system was quad surround. The depiction of the Normandy invasion was so realistic you felt as if you were there. I cannot imagine the horror those young boys felt, lambs led to the slaughter at Omaha Beach. FYI if it wasn't for France in the Revolutionary War we'd likely be the United Provinces of England.

I just wanted you to know that we in the Netherlands even after almost eighty years still remember those who came to liberate us after those five horrible years of occupation(as I understood from the many stories my grandfather,uncle and father told me)each year with two minutes of a nationwide silence out of respect for those who gave so much .And all children and grandchildren of those brave men should be enormously proud of what these men accomplished even in dire circumstances.And that we treat those men whose bodies still remain here with utmost respect and dignity and that we teach our children to respect those men by for example having school classes and local families adopt the graves of the soldiers who died to maintain these and place flowers on these graves as a token of respect and continuing gratitude for giving us back our freedom.

Yes it's hard to believe that it is 20 years when Saving Private Ryan was released and I agree those first 20 minutes of the landings on Omaha beach alone would have justified the Oscar for best picture IMO also I think the set-up of that at the beginning of the picture gives us the audience a feeling of almost shell-shock that during the rest of the movie you feel that sense of fear and anxiety those men must have felt.Did you and your uncle see the series Band Of Brothers Sky?Yes it was thanks to the contributions of Lafayette and the French that the US ultimately won it's independence from the British and that the USA got the resources to train and maintain their own army because prior to that most of the combat between the British army and US rebels had been a guerilla type pf combat.

So sorry this is not on subject. But Star Trek never truly captured war. The sound of the Panzer tanks really got to uncle Marty. He was never the same from what dad told me. The Panzers were monstrous machines of death. Uncle Marty took 3 of them out. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hsimp=yhs-SF01&hspart=Lkry&p=panzer+attack+saving+private+ryan+youtube#id=1&vid=a394354437978e47b3440a63738dc743&action=click

Well Star trek never truly captured war indeed sky although we did get the Dominion War in DS9 and in particular with ENT we got the Xindi conflict where we do get to see the defeats and deaths take their toll on our main character we see Archer struggle with it and we also see Trip change from a happy cheerful go -lucky guy who kind of looses his innocence after he finds out his sister was one the the millions of victims that Xindi weapon caused back on Earth and we see all of the crew struggle and defeating the odds during that third season of ENT (part of the reasons why I'm (unlike other Trekkies) so fond of ENT).

I 'm so sorry to hear that his experiences in WW II scarred your uncle Marty so much Sky and I hope that the happiness and gratitude of all the people he liberated were some consolidation for all the horrors and trials your uncle Marty had to face.And besides that it should be some consolidation that if your uncle had not taken out those three panzers they could have caused the deaths of dozens of other fellow soldiers which he with his contribution prevented.Thinking about your uncle reminded me of a piece of dialogue in Sam Fuller much overlooked war movie masterpiece The Big Red One about killing and war.

Griff:(played by Mark Hamill) I can't murder anybody.

The Sergeant(Played by Lee Marvin in probably one of his finest roles): We don't murder; we kill.

Griff: It's the same thing.

The Sergeant: The hell it is, Griff. You don't murder animals; you kill 'em.

Also this movie kind of served as a template for Saving Private Ryan and was based on Fuller's own WW II experiences in Europe where we get an honest account of life at the front and although we don't see the bloody carnage of Private Ryan,because of the rather limited budget Fuller had what he managed to pull off on that tight budget can still be considered quite amazing . Also in the final part of the series The Pacific they show the soldiers coming home from the Pacific and all of the trauma's and nightmares these men suffered from .Was your uncle there during the landings on Omaha beach or was he with the Airborne operations like the men of Easy Company in Band Of Brothers?

@Thespear said:

Skypower,

One was a lady 'Gretchen' something and the other a guy. They were let go after 4 new season 2 episodes were finished. I learned this from the Sept 2018 Comic-Con where the new cast and crew showed up and they didn't. If you are with CBS All access they frequently appeared on the After Trek shows giving useful explanations about the show. Yes, Star Trek was from inception (i) always forward looking; unafraid to explore new internal and external worlds/concepts/ideas and (ii) always a reflection of current social morays and a commentary on current culture. Perhaps Roddenberry did not make that commentary (ii) consciously, nevertheless by reviewing the episodes of TOS we can get some idea what 1960 society was like. My point is that a 2018 ST should similarly reflect this current world and I fear by trying to get more money, the producers have compromised this effort and 2018 will look more like 1960!

I don't know what the 'creative differences' were but as I compare season 2 's latest trailer with those of season 1, certain things become clear.

Roddenberry didn't put in the commentary consciously? Here you grandstand about how great STD is and yet you have no clue about Star Trek

I have serious reservations about the new season. Society is so polarized now. I can only hope the show runner(s) and studio execs can cut through the chaos with a searing knife of truth and blast through political correctness. The chances of that are akin to a snowball surviving the Sahara. Second, I believe the business model for CBS All Access has been horribly mismanaged and the budget for each episode will be compromised. I'm old school. New school would benefit from attending.

@SkyPowers said:

I have serious reservations about the new season. Society is so polarized now. I can only hope the show runner(s) and studio execs can cut through the chaos with a searing knife of truth and blast through political correctness.

Of course they're not going to do that, they're going to run this show into the ground while doing an SJW circlejerk believing they're doing the right thing by forcing politics onto us instead of telling a good story with good characters. Star Trek has always been progressive but it hasn't ever sucked so hard at displaying its progressivism.

The only way I can see this show being salvaged is if Saru is thrown into another time-line that's actually the prime timeline where every looks as it should and Michael Burnham died on the colony as a child with her parents.