Cleaning Up the Wreckage

For years people have said in my presence that despite the leftist leanings of Hollywood, the people running it were there to make money.  But despite that I watched as Hollywood produced bomb after bomb that preached the leftist creed above all other ingredients in the film.  They sacrificed entertainment, artistry and certainly profitability on the altar of woke propaganda.  Probably the most egregious of these studios was Disney that sacrificed the virtually unlimited money-making machines of such franchises as Star Wars, Marvel Comics and even the classic Disney princess movies to bang away at woke agenda elements like LGBTQ identity, anti-white racism and feminist dogma.

Well, maybe, just maybe, the tide has turned.  I think this week we received two data points that signal a definite reversal.  The first is the news today that Sky Dance has cancelled the third season of “Star Trek – Starfleet Academy.”  This was a two-season installment that has been estimated to have cost somewhere between two hundred and four hundred million dollars.  Now that is an enormous amount of money but what makes it astonishing is that when this show ran it wasn’t one of the top ten shows on Paramount Plus.  It was regularly beaten out by reruns of “Everyone Loves Raymond” and “Sponge Bob Square Pants.”  In fact, it was even worse than this.  In order to build up buzz for the first episode, it was put on YouTube for free and less than a thousand people watched it the first day.  Think about that.

Paramount was bought by Skydance last year so they didn’t order this show.  And the production company (Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout) is finishing its contract with Paramount in April and it’s looking like they won’t be doing anymore Star Trek for Skydance.  And Skydance is probably going to purchase Warner Brothers this year and that may have a very great impact on how the DC Universe movies look going forward.  So, there is an example of changing sensibilities going forward in Hollywood.  Enormous costs for productions that no one wants to watch are ending.  So that’s the negative case, what won’t be happening anymore.

As for what is happening on the positive side let’s look at what Amazon/MGM have released this week.  Andy Weir (the author of the book turned movie “The Martian”) wrote the book “Project Hail Mary” in 2021.  It cost two hundred million to make.  It made $141 million on its first weekend.  This is one of the biggest openings in the last four years.  And it is predicted to be a big hit.  It’s a movie whose only human character is a white male.  The only diversity casting is an alien creature that looks like a pile of small rocks.  There’s no woke elements at all.  Just an adventure story about a man light years from Earth cooperating with an unearthly creature to save both of their planets.  From all of the reviews I’ve read it’s a solid movie that the whole family can and probably will enjoy and it doesn’t say anything about the LGBTQ or how white people stole America from the Indians or enslaved black people.  And the fact that the astronaut is not a girl boss but a young white man I take to be aspirational for every white American boy who has been told for the last couple of decades that they shouldn’t get a turn at being the good guy.  So that’s the positive side.  Hollywood can make good movies and people will come to the theaters to see them.  And they can make money doing it.

Maybe the tide has turned.

A Firefly Animated Series

The sci-fi television series “Firefly” and its subsequent big screen continuation “Serenity” came out in 2002 and 2005 respectively.  That’s a very long time ago.  So, for that whole 20 plus years there have been rumors that circulated on-line that a sequel tv show or a movie would be greenlit.  And the fanbase of Firefly has been dying for such a sequel all these years.

And now their dreams are coming true.  Well, almost.  There won’t be a live-action tv show or movie.  There will be an animated movie with the original cast providing the voices of their characters.  And other than Ron Glass (who died a number of years ago) the whole cast is coming back.  But will it be any good?

Firefly and Serenity were the creation of Joss Whedon.  He invented them and breathed life into them.  Joss Whedon will not be writing or producing or directing this new movie.  He has been canceled in Hollywood for bad behavior.  Apparently, he hurt the feelings of some actresses before or during the #metoo witch hunts and has been consigned to a lower level of hell where powerful Hollywood men are sent to burn forever.  And without Whedon what are the chances that a new Firefly would be anything like the original?

Well, we’re about to find out.  That’s a slight exaggeration.  It’ll probably take a year or longer to produce this movie.  And whether it’s a tv miniseries or a motion picture you probably have to add a few months to fit it into the schedules for these kinds of things.  So, let’s say eighteen months.

Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that the best thing that could have happened to Firefly was exactly what did happen.  It only lasted a part of a season on tv and then had a motion picture to provide a satisfying climax to the characters and the story.  And the reason I felt that way was because Firefly appealed to me exactly because it went against the kind of female-centric left-leaning stuff that Joss Whedon typically produces.  Things like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” and “Dollhouse” are what he makes.  And those shows are garbage from my perspective.  Firefly was from the opposite perspective.  It was the battle between the oligarchic Alliance which is a stand-in for today’s globalists and the Independents who are the freedom-loving commoners much like today’s Right.  But the danger as I see it is that eventually Whedon would have tweaked the characters and stories until they became “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

And I still think that.  The two showrunners they’ve put in charge of this animated series are as thoroughly left-leaning and devoted to woke culture as anyone else around.  If anything, they’re worse than Whedon because at least he was talented.  They’re not.  So, I fully expect this new show will be pretty awful.

That being said I will watch it when it comes out.  Firefly was enormously entertaining while it lasted.  And it will be nostalgic to see the animated characters and hear the voices of the old crew.  But I would be shocked if it turned out to be good.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 15FEB2026 – The Wrath of Khan-ecticut

I do remember seeing Wrath of Khan in the theater on opening night. It was a strange day, Raining heavily when we tried to go to the matinee at a multiplex (4 theaters Wonder of Wonders!) in Orange CT. Ultimately that attempt failed as we didn’t quite make it to New Haven as my 1974 Duster was having alternator problems with the belt slipping due to the rain and splashing. We limped it back to my Buddies house grabbed a snack and hopped in his family’s ancient Suburban. Went to the 6 PM showing and watched the movie. We were enthralled (and nearly teary eyed at the “I am and always have been your friend” line as well as playing of Amazing Grace). We had noticed the rain was LOUD at times almost drowning the dialogue. Got out to Monsoon level rain and a parking lot with 3-5″ of water/ Getting home was a challenge, Rt 95 was closed in Branford due to several accidents and deep water. We were diverted eventually choosing a path along the coastal roads. Came to a bridge over a normally gentle stream running out to Long Island Sound. The bridge is normally about 4′ above the stream. The stream was now a 2′ deep torrent over the bridge. Being young stupid guys (college age) we decided to forge on. I got out and walked ahead of the Suburban to check the depth (I hope you realize this was a very bad choice and I am lucky to be writing this some 40+ years later: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO THIS !!!). As we came off the bridge there was a low spot ahead and so I was still the depth gauge. Shortly I felt my knee bump something. It was the bumper of a Ford Taurus wagon submerged such that maybe 6″ of its roof was sticking out of the water ahead of me. Needless to say we turned around and spent a couple hours fishing about for a way back to my buddy’s home that would be passable with the 2′ or so of clearance the Suburban had. That said Wrath of Khan was well worth the journey.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

My goodness.  1982.  Has it been that long?  I think I saw this movie in the theater but I’m no longer sure.  Okay, so this movie shows all the signs of riding the crest of Star Wars making sci-fi exciting again.  The theme music is obviously aping John Williams’ theme from Star Wars.  Well, of course they did.  They’d have been nuts not to.  This was the second Star Trek movie and after how boring the first movie was, they must have decided they needed to get back to the original formula that made the tv show work, action/adventure with a little science fiction thrown in for window dressing.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

When the movie begins “Admiral” James Kirk is observing cadets responding to a simulation of a space emergency.  Captain Spock is testing his Vulcan student Ensign Saavik to see if she can reconcile reality with regulations.  During these simulations Kirk tells Dr. McCoy that he feels old now that he’s behind a desk instead of commanding a starship.

Meanwhile the USS Reliant’s Captain Clark Terrell and first officer Commander Pavel Chekov beam down to evaluate a planet to see if it is lifeless as required for the next test of the “genesis device.”  This is a system that can take a lifeless planet and both terraform it and create life on it.  But it turns out that the planet is actually the planet that Kirk marooned Khan Noonien Singh and his group of genetically modified supermen on, twenty years earlier.  The reason that the Reliant’s crew didn’t know this is because some cosmic instability blew up one planet and moved Khan’s world where it had been.  This also made Khan’s home a death sentence that he only avoided by his incredible intelligence.  But the death of his wife Khan blames on Kirk.

Putting “super earwigs” into the ears of Chekov and Terrell, Khan takes control of their minds and forces them to betray their ship into Khan’s hands.  Finding out where Kirk was and about the genesis device, he hatches a plan to destroy Kirk and the Enterprise and use the genesis device to destroy the life on an already flourishing world.  Apparently, this is the dark side of the device and why only lifeless worlds must be treated.

Khan captures the genesis device and lures Kirk into an attack by the Reliant.  After almost destroying the Enterprise Kirk uses some trickery to take over control of the Reliant’s bridge and damages that ship enough to get it to retreat.

Kirk manages to rescue the chief scientists of the genesis project.  They happen to be one of Kirk’s old girlfriends and her son who also happens to be Kirk’s son.  The young man despises Kirk for not being a pacifist geek like himself.  Finally, the showdown arrives.  The Enterprise is heavily damaged and can neither outrun nor outfight the Reliant.  So, Kirk lures Khan into a “nebula” where the Enterprise’s weakness will not be decisive.  Kirk manages to get enough potshots off to destroy the Reliant but Khan decides to activate the genesis device in order to destroy the Enterprise which without warp drive will not have enough time to escape its destructive force.

Seeing that time was of the essence Spock leaves the bridge and heads for engineering where to the horror of McCoy and Scott he intends to enter the warp drive containment room.  Spock uses his Vulcan neck pinch to disable McCoy and then uses the Vulcan mind meld to give McCoy some kind of subconscious suggestion and we hear him say to McCoy, “Remember.”  Spock then enters the radiation area and removes the safety housing from the warp drive and with his face and hands in the radiation field, “fixes” the warp drive manually.  As soon as it comes on line, the bridge crew uses the warp drive to escape the genesis blast by a split second.

Then McCoy calls Kirk over the intercom and tells him to come to engineering in time to say goodbye to a dying Spock.  The rest of the movie is Spock’s funeral in space where after the eulogy by Kirk, his coffin is shot out of the ship toward a planet that the genesis device somehow produced out of the nebula where the Reliant was located.  After that Kirk and his son have a reconciliation.  When asked again by McCoy how he feels Kirk says, “Young, I feel young again.”  In the last scene we see Spock’s coffin on the ground in an idyllic setting on the new planet.

Okay.  So just as a point of departure, Star Trek: The Motion Picture; the movie that preceded this one was awful because it was boring and nothing much happened.  So, this movie had lots of action and stuff happens left and right.  I read that they achieved this by kicking Gene Roddenberry upstairs and not letting him play with the script.  So good for them for figuring that out.  Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh is a wonderful hammy villain.  The crew of the Enterprise were very much their old selves from the tv show.  So, what’s not to love.  And the tragic farewell of Spock to Kirk is the climax of the movie.  Sure, it’s hammy tv acting at its worst.  But it’s wonderfully satisfying for any fan of the old show.  How the young respond to it I won’t speculate on.  I highly recommend it to all fans of Star Trek TOS.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 19JAN2026 – Star Trek Decline

I’m an old line Star Trek fan. I remember it live on TV when I was a kid. I was young enough that when it went to Friday night at 10pm in the third season I had to get a bedtime dispensation. Luckily, it was Friday night so leniency prevailed. I then watched them repeatedly out of WPIX from NYC who ran them twice a day 5 days a week

Recently we’ve been watching Enterprise Honestly, it is pretty good (although I think they abused the T’pol character and being first officer/XO gets her compared with Spock)
Strange New World was also not half bad although it plays havoc with continuity and characters from Star Trek and Next Generation. I tried Discovery and Picard and disliked both. Lower Decks is a gem and cleverly makes many things from the original animated series, particularly the Caitian and Kzinti species canon. It always feels like the best of the humorous original Trek (e,g, A Piece of the Action) episodes. I was hoping for a Horta crew member but no such luck.

You say they spent $100 million on the Starfleet Academy series? Well they probably gotten a better return if they had taken that to Vegas and bet it on roulette or simply just burned it. Other than Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks the Modern Treks haven’t gotten much attention with occasional exceptions (Picard’s Ending). The recent movies (Kelvan time line) varied from meh to worth watching at home (and #4 apparently justifiably gone into permanent development hell).

Like Disney with Star Wars they seem to have gone out of their way to find a producer that dislikes the original material. This never works well as seen by Kathleen Kennedy wrecking the Star Wars movies and then moving on to wreck the Acolyte when the TV side had been showing her up. Honestly there are a WHOLE bunch of Scifi properties that could be acquired and developed for say 20 million each. that’s five of them and I bet 2-3 succeed at some level maybe even take off. Thats not something that this 90120 in space series is going to do. Who was the target? Young teens? Are you even going to get them to watch something based on a 60 year old premise? 20-30 something affluent women (the Karen/AWFL Demographic, I want that watching my show)?They’re busy picking on various folks Throwing it into the weird far future of Discovery which had pretty dismal numbers just baffles me. I can tell you the target demographic ISN’T me.

Star Trek – Starfleet Academy – A Rant

Paramount spent somewhere north of a hundred million dollars on a tv series called “Star Trek – Starfleet Academy.”  I guess they realized after the fact that it was unwatchable and so they put the first episode on YouTube for free.  But nobody watched it.  Now that’s an exaggeration.   Technically thirteen hundred (1,300) people viewed it.  But on YouTube that’s equivalent to zero.

So basically, they spent a hundred million dollars on something that no one wants to see.

If you watch the trailer you’ll understand why.  Starfleet Academy seems to be made up of fat lesbians.  Some are human, some are alien but all of them are fat and all of them are lesbians.  Once again this is an exaggeration.  They also have Holly Hunter as the captain or head schoolmarm or something.  And I believe there is a gay Klingon.  So, yay.

Just as with Star Wars, Star Trek has finally reached the epitome of destruction.  Over the course of the last sixty years or so it went from a mildly entertaining sci-fi adventure series to a Woke DEI Struggle Session.  Well, who wouldn’t pay to see that?

As with Star Wars, the makers of this new show miscalculated something about the audience and their products.  And it’s this:  The audience that enjoys the “message” they’re pushing in these shows doesn’t like science fiction.  And the audience that likes science fiction doesn’t like their “message.”  It’s like that day in math class where they explain Venn diagrams and unions and intersections and all that jazz.  Well, the circle of people who like the message and the circle of people who like science fiction do not intersect at all; open space between the blue and red circles.  No purple.

This show was green-lit before Paramount was purchased by David Ellison.  He isn’t woke.  I’m guessing that losing a hundred million dollars on a show nobody wants to see is going to make him very mad.  Hopefully this will result in the series being cancelled and the team responsible for this travesty being fired.

Coincidentally, Kathleen Kennedy has just been fired from running Lucas Films over at Disney.  It was described as her desire to get back to personally producing pictures for Disney but I’m pretty sure they’ve had enough of her “golden touch.”  She singlehandedly incinerated the Star Wars brand and lost many hundreds of millions of dollars at Disney by doing the same thing that the Star Trek franchise did.  They made a Star Wars brand for girls and girls don’t like science fiction.

Well, here we are.  A decade into the complete feminization of action adventure and all the major franchises have been rendered toxic and unwatchable.  Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been losing money on its girl-boss outreach program.  Now what?

I guess we’re all hoping that losing all that money will finally get the studios to step back and reflect.  We’re about to find out.  Summer 2026 is right around the corner and we can expect to get some kind of answer from the tent pole summer movie list.  If it’s more estrogen laden, DEI boiler plate then I guess they still have some more money to burn.  But I can always hope.

ShatnerKhan X

Today I spoke to my fellow initiates in Advanced Shatneriana and it was decided that ShatnerKhan X will take place on January 17th at the Compound in the heart of Dunwich.  Now you may ask is this really the tenth ShatnerKhan.  Well, I tried to look back at the records and discovered that in November of 2024 I mentioned ShatnerKhan VIII.  But before that the highest number I could find was III.  So, something seems wrong.  I went farther back and found that ShatnerKhan I occurred on November 1st 2019.

That was over a year after my initial decision to celebrate all things Shatner in my groundbreaking post. “William Shatner a Demigod of Bad Acting.”  It’s required reading at Starfleet Academy.

The actual agenda is not as structured as in ShatnerKhans past.  Will we watch the two Twilight Zone episodes?  Will we review the various Star Trek episodes where Kirk performs his signature shoulder roll?  Will we rate the various alien women he groped?  Will we analyze his interactions with Lieutenant Sulu for any telltale animosity?  Will we do a survey to decide in which episode Kirk looks fattest?  The only thing I’m certain is we will play “Rocket Man.”  After all it’s a short performance and it combines all of Shatner’s signature tics in one package.  It has the weird pauses, the meaningless syllable stress changes in dialog and his truly embarrassing facial expressions trying to convey inappropriate emotions.  It is a masterclass in bad acting with bad singing thrown into the bargain for free.

And it is important to have a ShatnerKhan.  As we all know Bill Shatner was born in 1931.  He will be ninety-five in 2026 if he makes it to March 22nd.  And honestly, he’s starting to look a little raggedy.  So now is definitely a good time to review his many achievements and mock him relentlessly.

In addition, it’s also an excuse to eat extremely fattening foods and sit around and shoot the breeze with my old friends.  We’re not getting any younger either and it’s time to catch up on what’s gone on over the last year or two.  There are milestones and family stuff and plans to make for the upcoming year and now is the best time before we all get swamped with work and other commitments.

So it is with a light heart that I announce this incredible event.  Will we wear the Shatner masks from the “Halloween” movies (probably not, they’re really uncomfortable and would stop us from continuously eating)?  Will we watch any of the Star Trek movies like parts of the Wrath of Khan with the famous “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!! Moment (probably not, too much work to tee up)?  Will we eat and drink way too much food and dessert?  There I can answer categorically and emphatically Yes!!!  Of course, there is the danger of bad weather upending our plans and causing a cancellation.  This is after all Dunwich, a cursed land with endless evil bleeding into everything including the weather.  But we are intrepid individuals and fear no evil.  So SHATNERKHAN X !!!!!!!

Hailing Frequencies Open!

Back in the 1960s we had a tv show called “Star Trek.”  It starred William Shatner as James Tiberius Kirk, the captain of the starship Enterprise.  And for one hour every week Kirk and his crew of four hundred able-bodied men (and women) warped their way through the galaxy seeking out new life and new civilizations and boldly went where no men had gone before.

And wherever they went Lieutenant Uhura kept them (mostly) in contact with the Federation using a form instantaneous contact called sub-space communication.  I say mostly because something called sub-space interference would be invoked whenever it would be useful to the plot for the Enterprise to be incommunicado.  This would allow Kirk to show initiative and break with inconvenient policy like the Federation’s Prime Directive against interfering in the technological development of more primitive civilizations.  Of course, Kirk broke this rule about a million times in the course of the show.  But you know, there was dramatic tension while they sorted out their feelings about this rule.

But getting back to sub-space communication, it was instantaneous.  Which was needed to make the stories work.  After all, radio waves are electromagnetic waves and propagate at the speed of light.  The Enterprise travels many times the speed of light (maximum about 1000 times the speed of light).  So normal radio communication is essentially useless for them.  They could beat their radio message back to Earth by a factor of as much as a thousand-fold.

But here’s the thing.  Suppose you want to write a story where faster than light space travel is impossible but instantaneous communication with other stellar systems is possible?  What would be the dramatic possibilities of such an arrangement.  Well, basically, it allows the writer to imagine radically different cultures and organisms sharing ideas and information across the entirety of the cosmos.

You could have a supremely old race teaching a young one how to avoid all of the dangers that it experienced.  And they could teach them about their future.  Suppose a race on a planet is circling a star that is about to explode.  What would they want to pass on to the universe?  Maybe some religious insight or a supremely beautiful musical composition or maybe just their name; so, they would not be forgotten after they die.

Now of course instantaneous communication is as completely untethered to scientific reality as warp drive is.  But I can still see how using it in a story without FTL space flight would present story lines that aren’t as well-explored as ones where FTL space flight exists but “sub-space” communication does not.

Now all this being said, I will say that Lieutenant Tawny Madison, played by Sigourney Weaver in the movie Galaxy Quest really improved on Lieutenant Uhura’s performance as communications officer.  Her costume was significantly skimpier and showed much more cleavage than Lieutenant Uhura ever did.  And Madison didn’t need to wear an ear piece to hear the computer tell her what the ship was doing.  All she had to do was repeat what everyone else could hear over the ship’s speaker system.  Now that was progress.

16APR2025 – Wednesday Coffee Walk Zoom Call – To Boldly Go Where No Hag Has Gone Before

It’s always good talking to the boys.  What will be the topic for the week?  What will be the funniest or the craziest or the most annoying topic for the Left?  There were several candidates; NYC subway necrophilia, General Flynn’s call for Obama’s arrest and NY AG Leticia James’ real estate fraud scandal.  But everyone’s favorite by a lot was “Leftist Hags in Space!”  We all got a good laugh out of the likes of Gayle King, Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez, washed up pop star Katy Perry and nobodies Aisha Bowe, Kerianne Flynn and Amanda Nguyen squealing around on top of a comically phallic “Blue Origin” rocket that rose to an unimpressive 62 miles above Earth and then parachuted back.  The whole roundtrip took place within a ridiculously short 12 minutes.

This all female “crew” followed in the footsteps of 90+ year old fake rocket man James T Kirk, (AKA William Shatner) as he also failed to reach Earth orbit in the painfully underpowered suborbital rocket.  It was the opinion of all on the zoom call that a better effect could have been achieved if Bezos had instead equipped the ship with a female crew composed entirely of professional strippers.  There was disagreement as to whether weightlessness was a problem or a bonus from the point of performance.  Also, it was debated whether a stripper pole would be a safety hazard in the “cockpit.”

I noticed Camera Girl looking disapprovingly at me as she walked by at this point during the zoom call but free speech is a cherished right of the coffee walk tradition so I ignored the implied censorship and laughed along with the rest of the jackasses.  Ah, good times.

So, we compared the press coverage of this absurdly unimpressive publicity stunt and compared it to Space-X planning and executing a critical rescue of actual astronauts from the orbiting space station where Boeing’s failure stranded them for over half a year.  Basically, other than Fox News the rest of the media performed a virtual black out of the Space-X mission while the Bezos stunt was given 24/7 coverage by all the news stations as if it were something worthy of discussion.

And it’s impossible not to come to the conclusion that Jeff Bezos has managed to make space travel uncool.  Now I’ll qualify this.  Suborbital rocket flight is not really space-travel.  It’s really just air travel of a very inconvenient and useless kind.  But he has managed to attach a taint to rocket flight which I wouldn’t have thought possible.  And I should have expected nothing less from the founder of Amazon.com.  After all, the company who has his annoying trucks delivering things at my house seemingly before I order them would obviously be able to make rocket ships annoying too.

Well, I can always hope that the next all female crew will be Democrat politicians.  Let’s say Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Hillary Clinton and Maxine Waters.  Put all four of them in blue jumpsuits and at least for ten minutes I can hope against hope for some real excitement.  Engine, O-ring, parachute, whatever.

Critical Drinker Discovers Firefly

It’s been over twenty years since Firefly was even a distant memory of a television show.  That excellent sci-fi series that struck a decidedly anti-elitist, pro-freedom, anti-“surveillance state” chord with its rag tag crew of space smugglers and other nonconformists in their chronically malfunctioning space ship Serenity.

I’m glad to see that the next generation is coming to recognize what a great show it was and just how much better it was than the current crop of fantasy and science fiction shows that have not a hundredth of its creativity and heart.  Kudos to the Crtical Drinker for saying so.