This is good news.

It was well done and might be something Paramount is willing to do more of even if the television franchise is on ice.

It’s not a fan novel.

The Full Circle Voyager series is official tie-in fiction published by Pocketbooks and CBS. Official tie-in fiction is beta-canon. That is, canon until overwritten by something onscreen.

The key thing in this is that the tie-in writer for this series Kirsten Beyer has significant credibility and authority within the franchise. Her research and statements on the legal situation around this are credible and official.

Kirsten Beyer was in the middle of writing the Voyager books when she joined the television writers as of the first season of Discovery. She’s officially got the mandate as the expert keeper of canon in the writers room — even if she’s not always listened too. More, she was made the liaison for the tie-in writers to the shows as of 2017. She’s now a CoExecutive Producer and cocreator of SNW.

When that book was published, and she chased down the history on Locarno/Paris, she had the greatest access to past Executive Producers and internal legal advice and archives. She wouldn’t have claimed that without solid evidence.

I suspect that it had to do with the WGA contract at the time that TNG was in production.

Writers with a script credit got specific residuals for characters they created in a script according to what Beyer wrote. So, taking a one-off character and putting them in a main cast role in a new show would be providing creator credits for the entire show.

Chief Miles O’Brien is a different story altogether. Colm Meany was originally contracted as a background regular as the transporter chief but without a name. These kind of roles are reliable and keep actors eating while allowing them to audition for other roles.

According to what I heard at a Creation Con panel back in the early 90s, the showrunners eventually decided to give the character a name. Colm Meany wasn’t advised, nor was his agent — so Meany actually was raising a complaint that he was being replaced without notice, only to find out he’d been upgraded to a named part.

Kirsten Beyer actually is on the record saying that this was confirmed to her when she was writing the Voyager Full Circle novels.

In those books, she has the incident and the consequences as part of Paris’ backstory that gets thrown in his face in a legal proceeding back on Earth.

My recollection is that she printed this in an author’s note in the specific book so it must have had legal clearance for the tie-in literature.

Unfortunately, that Instagram post seems unavailable now.

In any event, I would be happy to see both James Frain back as Sarek and Mia Kirshner as Amanda Grayson.

I was one of those who really liked their performances as those characters.

The miasma of sadness I feel knowing that the SFA and SNW sets have been ripped down in Toronto and Mississauga is making it hard for me to really get excited and embrace the marketing for SNW season four.

I know I will be watching with my spouse and engaging here, but it’s very really not a great feeling given I was around for TOS’ cancellation, TAS’ cancellation, Enterprise’s cancellation and now the closing of this era.

As I noted to someone else, Mobius is a current day timey-wimey scifi action thriller available on Netflix. I thought it was very well done.

It’s about a police detective sergeant who possesses the ability to relive some (unpredictably random) days and uses it in solving crimes.

It takes place in Macau, so there’s some Cantonese and English mixed in with the Mandarin although the lead actor Bai Jingting is ethnically Manchu and from Beijing.

Bai Jingting has done quite a few scifi dramas recently. Another timey-wimey one Reset takes place mainly in the Chinese Republican era — with all the angsty spy-stuff and factional twists of that era — and was also on Netflix. (It’s no longer available in Canada but may still be on in the USA.)

Sometimes there’s very consistent tone — Mobius is a good example of tight and consistent tone.

But many in other cases there can be jarring juxtapositions in tone.

Shows that start out as slapstick or Lucille Ball type comedies may become very dark and serious in the third quarter.

Sometimes a comedy is defined only by the protagonists not dying in the end and a ‘happily ever after outcome.’ More in the vein of an Ancient Greek definition of comedy.

And more like Shakespeare’s theatre, there can be moments of outright comic relief in the midst of 40 episode nonstop tragedy.

Then, there are the comic non sequitur comments — especially about food preferences— in the middle of fight scenes that originated in Hong Kong action movies (Per Aspera Ad Astra references those).

I’d recommend that you also try the current day action timey-wimey sci-fi thriller Mobius also available on Netflix for another one to get you into Chinese dramas.

Bai Jingting who stars in Mobius is another strong and popular male lead who is doing a significant number of high concept sci-fi shows. He’s also got a superhero parody comedy movie Keep Real coming out in theatres in China this summer. No news on whether an international streamer will pick that one up.

Glad to be helpful.

There’s a lot of good stuff coming out of Mainland China in recent years but it’s often marketed in a way that makes it really difficult to know what a show or movie actually is about.

Even opening episodes can be tonally radically different than the rest of a series and the trailers and synopses are often simply deceiving. Tonal whiplash is part of the form.

Not what you fear at all.

This is definitely a cautionary tale about AI but not a dystopian one.

The Commitments.

Good to know. Thanks for sharing that.

Kbin/Lemmy federation doesn’t seem as good as it once was regardless of the state of your instance there.

VS and I just seem to have settled on having separate Mastodon and Lemmy profiles, albeit with closely similar names.

The fediverse remains a work in progress but it’s good to see that this place, which drew many of us from a large commercial platform, is still active.

I find that I am less and less willing to invest enthusiasm in American productions as they don’t get enough commitment from their streamers to make it worth it.

Apple seems to be make two season commitments for most shows, but generally they are following the self-destructive pattern of Syfy. There’s only so many times one can be burned.

Wow, that’s a lot of negativity towards both fancasting and idols. But I appreciate your laying out your perspective.

This fancasting was done with humorous intent, as one can tell by the original post text that I have included as well as the Chanel visor (since cdrama ‘traffic stars’ are known for being global brand ambassadors of high fashion houses).

So the joke is falling flat with you. The question is “Why?”

Star Trek fans always propose their ideas for new characters in the franchise and even for recasts. It’s nothing new. It’s done in the spirit of fun.

And it’s never taken particularly seriously by those who make casting decisions or we would have seen very different actors cast in all of the shows and movies over the past 50+ years of the continuing franchise. Especially, as many or most of the actors fancast are not any more skilled than idol actors — while on the other hand, the most recent Star Trek shows, that have consistently cast actors with good foundations and craft, have experienced the most fan negativity about casting.

What’s different about fancasting popularity idol ‘traffic stars’ from China vs the usual fancasting of A or B list American actors?

What I found different, and amusing, is that it’s a fancasting crossover from two very different entertainment contexts. It’s challenging assumptions with popular faces, known to the younger cdrama audience.

What’s also amusing to me is that it implicitly pokes fun at Star Trek’s baked-in tendency to cast at least some of the roles on the basis of physical attractiveness, despite its aspirational nature — and recognizes that there has been fan blowback when diversity in looks and body types are included.

I’m absolutely with you that Star Trek needs to be more inclusive of Asian actors, and generally inclusive of more non US actors to really have global reach.

The US-centric mindset of those at senior levels in charge of the franchise since Roddenberry, as well as the embedded American Exceptionalism, is a principal reason it’s cinematic features aren’t capable of making adequate profit margins.

Anime, kdramas and now cdramas, all are rising in global popularity, especially among GenZ and among young women. That’s a global trend affecting the audience that Star Trek needs to share in to survive. What’s the problem with considering what the franchise would need to do to compete with these?

Yes, there are other serious actors in Chinese film and television, as well as other Asian countries. And hopefully as the young audience that is interested in cdramas matures, they may broaden their horizons and take in productions that are more focused on quality than personal beauty.

However, it’s also true that very few, even among those who graduate from China’s top theatre and performing arts programs go directly into serious roles. Very few have the resources to create their own independent production companies. Most are contracted by agencies, with their careers managed by them — with enormous financial penalties if they seek to become independent or move agencies. Most are in their 30s before they can break into more serious film and television roles.

Let’s face it, Star Trek has historically put the most seasoned actors, with theatrical credits, in the Captain chair but the rest of the ensemble has typically been a mix of with less experienced actors included. Many legacy roles were cast with actors of an equivalent skill level to idols.

It’s very welcome to have an Asian actor of Michelle Yeoh’s calibre in a captain’s chair, but Sulu and Kim, in 60 years of the franchise, should not remain the only East Asian main ensemble characters. More, future casting of characters with Japanese, Korean or Chinese biographies should consider hiring actors who are from those countries rather than exclusively Americans with that heritage.

All to say, it’s an interesting discussion. Appreciate the engagement.

As I said, the images were posted on Reddit by someone who loves both Cdramas and Star Trek.

I’ve checked privately with the creator and they asked to watermark the images. They shared the watermarked versions with me by private messaging and agreed to let me post here.

This person is a professional vfx specialist working in television who did this for their own amusement. They have asked me to avoid sharing more detail on who they are which I believe is fair.

If you aren’t aware that there is a certain amount of directed compositing in many CGI engines for vfx and game design, I don’t know what to say.

Using generated render to rough up an idea can be part of the process.

Pursuit of Jade reportedly cost the equivalent of $100 million for 40 episodes and certainly looks like it.

S-tier cdramas are quite well funded now. I just watched the current day 2025 science fiction thriller Mobius on Netflix. It was at the production level of any American or European show.

The creator is a professional vfx artist who was playing, and has included a watermark for that reason.

Yes, AI is part of their toolkit, but these were not just a case of asking a gen AI tool fabricate something.

I’m going to infer that Deadline made a typo, but I copied it verbatim from their listing.