The Mandalorian TV series wasn't bad but the Star Wars franchise has been in reset/turnaround for ~7 YEARS (since the last movie). It's incomprehensible that Disney bet their relaunch on a spin-off streaming series based on a tertiary character miraculously swimming back upstream from online to cinema.
The two leads are a guy you never see and a small puppet (with the big reveal new character being a CGI alien). As great as they were, C3PO, Yoda and Chewbacca couldn't have carried Empire Strikes Back as the leads. What was Disney thinking?
Andor is the now the gold standard for Star Wars productions - serious themes, adult oriented, great writing and top tier acting. The Mandalorian was definitely aimed at a younger audience.
I think Mando season 1 is what Star Wars should be. A space themed throwback to old pulp novels, cowboys and samurai and pirates, with a veneer of lasers and spaceships painted on top.
Andor is great, don't get me wrong. But Star Wars is best when it's pulp adventure stuff.
> But Star Wars is best when it's pulp adventure stuff.
This is the way. I saw the first Star Wars the week it opened as a tween and it rocked my world. Both SW and Raiders of the Lost Ark had a clear vision of building on the proven structure of the old B&W movie serials like Flash Gordon but updating them with modern storytelling tools and larger budgets. It was a truly great concept and then Empire raised the stakes higher and even better.
You're right that Mando Season 1 was an attempt to get back to the original concept and it got close. Skeleton Crew is perhaps the only other SW series where the core idea was to update a proven structure of the past in a pure and focused way - except it chose a different genre than 1930s serials. Initially I didn't know what to make of Skeleton Crew but once I got that it was building on the 1980s tween adventures like Goonies, I appreciated how it absolutely nailed what it was going for. My own kids are now older than Skeleton Crew's target audience, so it obviously wasn't for me but I applaud it as Disney's only other pure attempt at applying the 'big idea' that made OG SW great to another genre.
As a sci-fan who loved the original IP to the point of reverence, even bad Star Wars is usually at least interesting but it can also be frustrating when it evokes echoes of the OG by being set in the same universe without even trying to be great in the same ways as the OG. For example, Andor is unique in being a spin-off that is actually very good but I'd argue none of the things that make it so good require being set in the Star Wars universe. It might be even better if it had been unshackled from the rules of the Star Wars cinematic universe and was a new, original sci-fi IP.
> Andor is unique in being a spin-off that is actually very good but I'd argue none of the things that make it so good require being set in the Star Wars universe.
I think it shows the potential of using the Star Wars setting to tell a wide variety of stories. However, although I loved the original trilogy, I wouldn't class myself as a huge Star Wars fan - probably more of a Trekkie.
Unfortunately, all the Trek shows have been canceled, so it looks like you're not going to have much to watch for a while. There's a final short season of Strange New Worlds done and coming soon, followed by the last season of Starfleet Academy and that's it.
For the first time in decades no new Star Wars series or movie is even rumored to be in development. Paramount has brand new owners with very different ideas and even Alex Kurtzman's (current Head of Trek) contract is expiring and hasn't been renewed. It's not clear SkyDance has any appetite for funding mega-expensive prestige sci-fi series. The currently unaired episodes were already finished or in production when SkyDance took over and they've approved nothing Star Trek since. When production wrapped, the huge sets built for both SNW and Academy (the most expensive in Star Trek history) weren't even put in storage, Paramount just had them dumpstered instead.
I actually thought SNW was pretty good as it was getting back to the core of what made TOS and TNG Star Trek good. But my 17 year-old daughter had sub-zero interest in Starfleet Academy and she was the target demographic. Sadly, things aren't looking good. The 60th year of Trek could be the last. Personally, I'm hoping that Paramount at least sells the Star Trek IP to someone - maybe Netflix or Amazon? All the billions that were being thrown at buying streaming market share for over a decade has dried up, so it's a bad time for an expensive property whose last few outings weren't big hits to be looking for a new home.
I also enjoyed Strange New Worlds (including the musical episode) and was hoping that was the direction that they were taking. Starfleet Academy seemed to be heading away from the original focus on science fiction ideas and instead tried to be Starfleet 90210, though bizarrely, I did enjoy watching Holly Hunter's performance and thought that is was more fun than annoying. Tig Notaro's character is also very watchable - they should make whole series based around her. Kerrice Brooks was also excellent as SAM and her performance won me over after initially thinking her character was just designed for comic relief.
However, the best modern Star Trek has to be The Orville.
Oh... you had to go and bring up the musical episode. :-)
Let me preface with: I actually like some more modern, top-tier musicals. I saw Wicked on Broadway with the original cast and was blown away by how good it was. Greatest Showman has 3 killer songs and I have 3 or 4 songs from Rent on my playlist, even though I've never seen the play. As for the broader musical genre, I don't mind the best of Lloyd Webber and I respect the craft of Gershwin and Sondheim but don't enjoy it enough to listen to - and average-quality musicals just aren't my thing.
That said, the SNW musical episode featured shockingly good songs in the musical genre and several of the cast are extraordinary singers. While I appreciated the way SNW committed to going all-in on an edgy concept, and it was clearly a labor of love which consumed many unpaid hours... to me, it just isn't Trek. Even a very good Trek musical can only exist in an uncanny valley for me. I know people who loved it. I get that they were watching it and feeling "OMG, I love that Trek is 'boldly going...' with such creative experiments!" and "OMFG, they can really SING!", "the songs are actually GOOD!" but those are all meta-thoughts, and if most of my thoughts during first-watch are meta-thoughts, something's wrong. Another sign of trouble: I can't actually recall any of the major plot points of the episode.
I grew up in the 70s and fell in love watching TOS re-runs after school and dutifully watched all the ST movies
during first-run, liking the even numbered ones more. Then as an adult, I loved TNG's entire run. As we said about OG Star Wars earlier in this thread, Trek represents a strong core premise to me (Roddenberry's concept pitch to NBC for TOS was "Wagon Train to the Stars"). And I'm fine when they play with the premise a little. I didn't mind when TOS did 'humorous' episodes, Mudd's Planet is still a classic and even Trouble with Tribbles didn't bother me. But when an IP with such a strong core identity strays too far from the fundamental nature of "what it is", I start to lose connection with it.
As I said about Andor, it's not that I reject branching out creatively. It's more that beyond a certain point, it's gone so far it starts becoming a different thing. To me, that's a sign it should have been born as it's own thing from the start. That lets the new thing define itself, find its unique core and be great on it's own terms. But when the root IP is one with decades of legacy core identity, anything that should be a new thing inherits creative baggage the size of a planet. This is bad because the new thing will inevitably start creatively rubbing up against the constraints of the root IP.
A simple litmus test for any high-concept in this context is to ask "Would it work if it was launched as it's own series in this existing universe?" I can imagine a Mudd's Planet spin-off series focused on Harry's adventures working great. It would benefit creatively from being set in the Star Trek universe and could even strengthen the Trek-verse in occasional cross-over episodes. Now ask the same question about a musical sci-fi series. How much would it creatively gain versus what it loses from being limited to the Trek-verse? The benefit would mainly be brand recognition drawing Trek fans to early episodes but, by definition, it's so different it'll inevitably have to stand or fall on its own. How would a musical cross-over with a different Trek series even work? As someone who's never seen Lower Decks, I found the SNW / LD cross-over episode not only weak but disorienting. The problem wasn't animation, it was tonal divergence between two things that work apart but not together (a sign that Lower Decks probably didn't gain as much from being in the Trek-verse as it lost). Two inverse examples are the excellent movie Galaxy Quest and John Scalzi's outstanding novel Red Shirts. Both are obviously completely inspired by the Trek-verse, but not being Paramount licensed, they are based on "a generic long-running, beloved sci-fi TV series" and neither suffers for it. In fact, they each diverge from the Trek-verse in several ways that allow them to be even better in ways they couldn't have been if they were set in the Trek-verse.
That's why I'd rather see a new musical sci-fi series have the freedom of creating it's own universe that best serves its unique creative needs.
I'll add one other thought which just occurred to me: Most of the serious fans who like the "gimmick" episodes such as the musical and Lower Decks cross-over, like them because of the gimmick. Whether the specific reason is that it's so different, creative, fun, well-executed etc - it's still about the gimmick. While various gimmick episodes certainly have their fans, those episodes are not commonly found near the top of "Best Episodes Ever" lists.
Conversely, there are a quite a few creatively bold Trek episodes which branch significantly into different genres, yet don't go too far which are commonly found at the top of "Best Episode Ever" lists. For example, TOS episode "City on the Edge of Forever" is considered one of the greatest episodes of not just Trek but any sci-fi show - and it's a 1930s noir detective story! Yet when you read descriptions of it, it's not described as "that noir detective episode", it's more "the amazing Star Trek story Harlan Ellison wrote." It's not remembered for the gimmick, it's revered for the story. Similarly, TNG episode "Inner Light" is an adult drama that could easily be a non-sci-fi fantasy movie starring Tom Hanks - yet is ranked in the top five TNG episodes of all time. The key difference is they are great episodes with gimmicks, not episodes with great gimmicks.
I agree about the difference between "great episodes with gimmicks" and "episodes with great gimmicks" and I'd put the SNW musical episode into the latter - it was them having fun with the whole premise and probably shouldn't be considered canon.
Personally, I enjoy it when writers/producers try out an experiment and have particular episodes that don't really fit in with the themes and expectations of the series as a whole, but they do tend to polarise people.
The classic example that I think of with regards to musical episodes is the Buffy The Vampire Slayer epsiode "Once More, With Feeling". Joss Whedon had been experimenting with different concepts, such as "Hush" (the opposite of a musical episode) and "The Body" (stunning piece of television in my view), so throwing in a musical episode wasn't completely unexpected, but that particular episode pushed forwards and resolving some major plot points with characters revealing deep secrets.
(It's interesting that the three Buffy episodes I mentioned are considered the best episodes despite them having dramatically different styles).
> For example, Andor is unique in being a spin-off that is actually very good but I'd argue none of the things that make it so good require being set in the Star Wars universe
Yes, exactly. Andor could easily have been a story of French Resistance against Nazi Germany during WW2
Star Wars is definitely at its best when it is not just being Star Wars
Well George Lucas did borrow a lot of stuff from samurai films (The Hidden Fortress being the main one), so that is a return to its roots. Personally, I think that Firefly did the cowboys in space a lot better, but maybe that's due to better writing. I did enjoy the Mandalorian, but it's a bit too shallow.
The concept in Mando is pretty much a direct rip of Lone Wolf and Cub, so I think it's really doing "Samurai in Space" more than "Cowboys"
Of course the cowboy and samurai pulp genres are pretty similar and borrowed a lot from each other. Lone Gunslinger with a code of honor versus a Lone Swordsman with a code of honor
But Star Wars was never about serious, adult themes, and great writing. It was about amazing space battles, laser swords, witty one-liners, adventure, and slapstick comedy, in a fun, kid-friendly package. Andor is a fine production. It isn't really Star Wars though.
My opinion: the closest movie, in spirit, to A New Hope is The Mummy (the 1999 one with Brendan Fraser).
You might be thinking of The Phantom Menace with its trade negotiations. The movie that Red Letter Media panned because of its focus on this plot point.
The feeble nod to politics in A New Hope mostly went over my head as a kid. It was already obvious the Empire was evil. They had a guy who choked people at a whim and another who blew up planets. The scene telling us the Emperor had dissolved the Senate meant nothing to me.
>Amazon said it had supported the devices for 14 years or more and could not keep doing so indefinitely. "Technology has come a long way in that time," said a spokesperson.
Wasn't the original concept of the Kindle that it shouldn't need to be replaced by newer models?
The device isn’t locked, and you can continue to read anything on it. You just can’t put new things on it directly from Amazon via its built-in interface.
An original-model Kindle has more of its original functionality than an original-model iPad.
Yes, the OS is locked. I misunderstood the point of your statement.
But all you are losing is the ability to use the Amazon store and borrowing that requires DRM. It still works fine as an e-Ink reader.
Anecdotally, the OSes on the really old ones are easily jailbroken. They have never updated them to an unbreakable one that I am aware of.
More than I can say for my first-gen iPads, which would still be wonderful devices for reading books today. I have a Kindle because it is, and long has been, the cheapest e-Ink device. It’s my reading-outdoors device; I don’t use it except at the beach/pool.
The problem with using a physical terminal for everyday computing in 2026 is that there is no model that provides a happy medium between sufficient bandwidth for a snappy experience while in use, and a cool retro feeling. Newer models one might have seen very recently, for example in a library, and older ones will feel sluggish.
I hope they will consider releasing DALL-E 2 publicly, now that there has been so much progress since it was unveiled. It had a really nice vibe to it, so worth preserving.
> Everyone learns many mathematical operations in school: fractions, roots, logarithms, and trigonometric functions (+, −, ×, /, sqrt, sin, cos, log, …), each with its own rules and a dedicated button on a scientific calculator. Higher mathematics reveals that many of these are redundant: for example, trigonometric ones reduce to the complex exponential. How far can this reduction go? We show that it goes all the way: a single operation, eml(x, y), replaces every one of them. A calculator with just two buttons, EML and the digit 1, can compute everything a full scientific calculator does. This is not a mere mathematical trick. Because one repeatable element suffices, mathematical expressions become uniform circuits, much like electronics built from identical transistors, opening new ways to encoding, evaluating, and discovering formulas across scientific computing.
Actually we know this for a long time. The universal approximation theorem states that any arbitrary function can be modelled through a nonlinear basis function so long as capacity is big enough.
The practical bit here is knowing how many basis functions can be approximated with a two operators. That’s new!
eh, i didnt find that paragraph very helpful. it just restates what it means do decompose an expression into another one only relying on eml, and vaguely gestures at what this could mean, i was hoping for something more specific.
It's potentially useful for computer algebra with complex numbers - we might be able to simplify formulas using non-standard methods, but instead via pattern matching. We might use this to represent exact numbers internally, and only produce an inexact result when we later reduce the expression.
Consider it a bit like a "church encoding" for complex numbers. I'll try to demonstrate with an S-expression representation.
---
A small primer if you're not familiar. S-expressions are basically atoms (symbols/numbers etc), pairs, or null.
S = <symbol>
| <number>
| (S . S) ;; aka pair
| () ;; aka null
There's some syntax sugar for right chains of pairs to form lists:
(a b c) == (a . (b . (c . ())) ;; a proper list
(a b . c) == (a . (b . c)) ;; an improper list
(#0=(a b c) #0#) == ((a b c) (a b c)) ;; a list with a repeated sublist using a reference
---
So, we have a function `eml(x, y) and a constant `1`. `x` and `y` are symbols.
Lets say we're going to replace `eml` with an infix operator `.`, and replace the unit 1 with `()`.
C = <symbol>
| <number>
| (C . C) ;; eml
| () ;; 1
We have basically the same context-free structure - we can encode complex numbers as lists. Let's define ourselves a couple of symbols for use in the examples:
($define x (string->symbol "x"))
($define y (string->symbol "y"))
And now we can define the `eml` function as an alias for `cons`.
($define! eml cons)
(eml x y)
;; Output: (x . y)
We can now write a bunch of functions which construct trees, representing the operations they perform. We use only `eml` or previously defined functions to construct each tree:
I'll stop there, but we continue for implementing all the trig, pi, etc using the same approach.
So basically, we have a way of constructing trees based on `eml`
Next, we pattern match. For example, to pattern match over addition, extract the `x` and `y` values, we can use:
($define! perform-addition
($lambda (add-expr)
($let ((((() (() . x)) ((() (() () (()))) y)) add-expr))
(+ x y))))
;; Note, + is provided by the language to perform addition of complex numbers
(perform-addition (add 256 512))
;; Output: 768
So we didn't need to actually compute any `exp(x)` or `ln(y)` to perform this addition - we just needed to pattern match over the tree, which in this case the language does for us via deconstructing `$let`.
We can simplify the defintion of perform-addition by expanding the parameters of a call to `add` as the arguments to the function:
There's a bit more work involved for a full pattern matcher which will take some arbitrary `expr` and perform the relevant computation. I'm still working on that.
Examples are in the Kernel programming language, tested using klisp[1]
The Steam Deck is an established product that was first released in February 2022. You may be thinking of the Steam Machine, which indeed does not have public pricing that I'm aware of.
"Disciples", but seemingly without back and forth feedback from the "teacher". Many happy to ride on the coattails of his reputation, though. This particular style might also be attractive to new film-makers because it allows them to dispense with learning the basics of traditional film language.
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