• A Look Back,  Inside Entertainment

    A Look Back: Star Trek III – The Search for Spock

    Every movie enjoys the same conceit: that the good guys might not win. But it’s a fallacy. In most stories, the good guys do wins. There might be twists and all that, but the bulk of stories end with the unspoken fairy tale climax of, And they lived happily ever after. But for the sake of our enjoyment, we entertain the prospect that they might not. After all, a predictable plot where we know what’s going to happen isn’t going to compel, excite, and tantalise us. We’ll grow disinterested – just as we would seeing the same repeat for the umpteenth time. Now the problem arises that some stories are…

  • Inside Entertainment,  Media Rants

    Discovering How to Ruin Star Trek

    I’m interrupting my overblown series on ranting at Star Wars to rant this week about another ruined franchise: Star Trek: Discovery. The second season just finished and I cannot contain myself. The first season was so bad that it almost killed any possibility of improvement. Almost. They then changed the showrunner. They changed writers. They had feedback from the fans. They had feedback from the licensees. Hmmm. Okay, all that amounted to a glimmer of hope. Maybe they could take all that on board and do something with Discovery and make it … Star Trek. Right? Right? Unfortunately, not. The second season isn’t just an indictment on the second season,…