Interesting extract from a longer /Film interview with in-demand director Roxann Dawson.
I appreciate how she speaks with respect for the shows of the new era.
Oh hell. So I’m a little bit tipsy, but I just saw the words “Roxanne Dawson (B’Elanna) passed” and got damn scared for a second
I’m sober and did the same.
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Woke up, no coffee yet, and saw "Roxann Dawson (B’Elanna) passed … " Startled the heck out of me.
Baked af and I freaked the mother fuck out (while remaining partially calm).
I am not tipsy and the title got me too. I was running a magic event in my game shop and let out an audible gasp causing several players to ask what was wrong.
I had the same panic. That’s not even the title of the article (‘Voyager’s Roxann Dawson Had A Chance To Direct Star Trek But Dropped It For Another Show’) so, unless the website changed it, you have to wonder what OP was doing writing it that way.
OP isn’t American. It’s not a universal euphemism.
Even having lived in the US at one point it’s not an automatic connection.
Canadians (at least in my experience) use the expression ‘passed away’ if at all to avoid saying ‘died.’
But also being Canadian, I’ve given my regrets elsewhere on this thread. And I’m sorry for the unintended shock to any and all who don’t share my dialect.
No worries. You regularly comment and post on a variety of topics, always with a steady and non-antagonistic viewpoint. This situation is very, “it’s not you, it’s me.” I have relatives from the southern U.S., and they shorten “passed away” to just “passed.” It’s just what I’m used to hearing.
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I’ve lived everywhere but Atlantic Canada actually. I also work with colleagues from coast to coast.
One hears it, (as in, ‘she moved into town once her husband had passed on’) but it’s not the kind of automatic euphemism that would make it the first interpretation. ‘She passed on that opportunity’ is really common.
When someone dies, we usually just say that.
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The title got me as well, and I was sober. My heart dropped and then I reread and let a sigh of relief…
The little blurb shown on this post is wrong:
Roxann Dawson was an actor on Star Trek: Voyager before she became a TV director, although she’s never actually directed a Star Trek episode.
She directed about 10% of all Enterprise episodes.
I thought she’d directed episodes of Voyager too.
Memory Alpha credits her with Voyager episodes ‘Riddles’ and ‘Workforce Part II’.
hit those fools with the knowledge
“With directing efforts on shows like “Voyager,” “Enterprise,” “Lost,” “The Americans,” and many more under her belt, she was most recently put in charge of two pivotal episodes of “Foundation” season 2, the Apple TV+ sci-fi series based on Isaac Asimov’s novels.”
I think they fixed the line and added the correct info now. That quote was from the article. Since the title says “new trek” I’m guessing they meant discovery/SNW/Picard as the trek the picked Foundation over to direct.
Wikipedia says she also directed 2 Voyager episodes.
Enterprise isn’t Star Trek, confirmed! (I kid, I kid.)
She directed episodes of both “Enterprise” and Star Trek: Enterprise", which each lasted two seasons. The stealth name change was surprising back then.
Enterprise is just a Quantum Leap episode.
I was gonna say, I just finished Enterprise and she directed at least two that I recall.
It even mentions directing enterprise in the article. Bad editing.
And it’s a quite nice little episode. Foundation really got good in its second season.
Second season is so boring I barely got through first two episodes over a week because I kept falling asleep watching them. I really hope it picks up in E3.
I think I have never disagreed with anyone more in my life then you and your post.
I’m actually a little jealous. That must be an awesome life :-)
The entire show is a crazy mess IMHO. But then I didn’t really enjoy the books either, so I must be a subhuman. Commence the downvotes! I’ll show myself out.
(It is nice to get an update on Dawson’s career though and I’m excited to see she made the jump to directing - never knew that).
The first 2 episodes are unwatchable but it gets better.
But those first 2, I do not blame you 1 bit, ep3 isn’t much better but by ep4 it starts not being garbage.
So much better Sci-fi out there that would be amazing for a TV series or three.
Personally I work love to have a go at the Greg Mandel series or if I had all the money the Honor Harrington series.
the Honor Harrington series.
These books are fun, but they’re not good. Bad prose, ridiculous characters, childish storylines. It would almost have to be approached like Starship Troopers and treated as a parody of the genre.
They get worse as they go on, like most Weber series. A few books in and they seem to always devolve to coredumps of exposition and backstory marginally dressed up as meetings. Even the tactics and action diminishes to the point where I’ve read more compelling write ups of tabletop war games.
(And I’m someone who both war games and has read every single book in the Safehold series.)
@cygnus The earlier books have fantastic, well-thought out space combat scenes, fairly well informed by physics and orbital mechanics.
Everything around those scenes is cringeworthy, and gets much worse as the series goes on. (Honor may be the most Mary Sue character ever.)
Haha yes, I mentioned the Mary Sue aspect in another reply before I saw yours.
spoiler
Especially the disturbing throuple where she eventually marries her old mentor and becomes basically a princess? Come on.
I’d like to see CJ Cherryh’s Alliance-Union universe brought to the screen.
Downbelow Station seems made to become a streaming series.
I just started listening through the series and all I can think about is how epic the TV show would be.
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English usage varies. That usage of ‘passed’ isn’t top of mind for me.
Regrets to have evoked death for anyone.
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Well that’s another cultural difference right there.
I’m Canadian. Expressing regret and saying we’re sorry is a reflexive social necessity.
We even have federal and provincial legislation (Apology Acts) to prevent an express of regret from being used against us in court.
But it’s also true that ‘Sorry, not sorry’ is a thing.
I’m glad she’s getting work, but I wish it wasn’t on that dumpster fire.
Edit: I guess I found the Goyer fanboys. Foundation sucks and is a slap in the face to the legacy of Asimov and classic Sci-Fi. “Foundation can’t be adapted…” Then fucking don’t and leave it alone. I hope Michael Bay gets tapped to start directing 1:1 adaptations of Star Trek I-V, and then they do an animated version of VI with Justin Roiland recording all of the voices.
from a not book reader (actually think I read them, but such a long time, I doubt you were even born yet), Foundation is Excellent fucking Science Fiction, and it’s too bad you can’t enjoy a production of this quality on this scale that just keeps getting incrementally better with every passing episode. it’s really good televison, and the best show on tv right now.
It’s not really Foundation though is it. It’s one plot that has a passing resemblance to Foundation but misses a lot of the point and another plot that’s interesting but has nothing to do with any of the books about the Emperor. I didn’t find the first series enitely unenjoyable, but I’m annoyed they wasted the license to one of my favourite book series for a show that could have been anything.
I’ve just started the show, and I feel like from the outset they made it clear that a LOT of the show is creative fiction to fill in the gaps. I feel like a lot of people forget just how short the original trilogy is. F, F&E and SF, collectively, are like an 8 hour read! I don’t love everything the show has done (and some of the acting is atrocious) but I love how they chose what boils down to allusions in the books and focused whole episodes on what that would’ve looked like in real time.
I also really like how they are not afraid to completely abandon cliff hangers for several episodes at a time, while still keeping you invested in what’s happening. Asimov dwas notorious for that and did it SEVERAL times on the trilogy. Oh you wanna know what happens? Well I’ll tell you eventually, but first, here’s forty pages introducing brand new characters on a completely different planet…300 years in the future. Bitch.
If the books were too short for a series, why not make a film or a series of films rather than stretching it out?
Its kind of fucked either way. They’re too short but a lot happens because each book is broken into thirds that are separated by huge time gaps, and inside those thirds there are also time gaps. A movie, even a long one, would be incredibly disjointed and the pacing would feel bizarre.
I imagine it’s probably why nobody has made it a series or movie before even though it’s such a beloved sci Fi series. You’d have to take a lot of creative liberties with it, which is for better or worse, what they’re doing.
With all due respect, I strongly disagree. I admit my views are coloured by my love of Asimov’s work, and their radical re-write has left a bad taste in my mouth. But when I analyse this show objectively I am left bewildered that anyone could call it “excellent fucking science fiction.”
Most of the actors are TERRIBLE. It was like watching wooden planks act. Instead of developing the story in any meaningful way, the directors chose to focus on disparate and dream-like sequences which appear to have little connection to each other. Bizarre pacing. They took the expansive time gaps and somehow made them confusing and meaningless. The dialogue is atrocious. The CGI is laughable. The accents are ridiculous. This is science fiction of the worst kind.
Lee Pace is the only reason I finished season one. Despite the horrific writing, he somehow pulls it off. The Expanse set the bar very high for sci-fi, but it showed us it can be done well. Foundation is fantasy in space. It’s Wheel of Time and Rings of Power in space bad.
As far as I see it: The series actually reverts the whole premise of Asimov’s vision, which is:
The behaviour of large groups of people can be modelled statistically, whilst in the series, everything hinges on specific events and persons.
If you want to film a long term epic tale about galactic civilisations, be my guest, but don’t call it “Foundation”.
Note: As good as Asimov’s world building is, literarily, he’s only mediocre.
Now that I pissed off as well the fans of the series, as the ones of Asimov, let me explain:
Asimov set milestones for SF:
His Laws of Robotics and Foundation are cornerstones of the genre.
When I say: “His literature is mediocre” it’s because he is not truly interested in his characters. He has no love for them. His stories are ideas driven, not character driven.
I’d still recommend him to anybody, even mildly interested in SF.
I can get behind this take.
I don’t think we should over-exalt 20th century science fiction literature that was fantastic at communicating concepts and ideas but made no genuine effort to do that with well developed characters.
The awe factor was great, and it did inspire, but even for avid readers, it can be a slog. If one takes the position the value of science fiction lies in engaging a broader audience than those of us who can read the math and follow the science, then it needs to be engaging enough that it attracts and holds the interest that audience.
At this point in my life, I expect both good ideas and good characterization and storytelling. Otherwise, I’d rather just read stories and models in real math. I have no criticism at all of the show’s EPs effort to make the ideas in Foundation more appealing and accessible with better storytelling.
I first read the Foundation series in my teens, after Dune and Dune Messiah, having graduated out of John Wyndham and run out of Arthur C Clark at my school and public libraries. Foundation held my attention, the ideas were cool, but I was also reading anything I could when I wasn’t doing schoolwork. I find it hard to imagine it would have held my interest in the face of the kinds of diversions kids can take with them now.
Asimov’s works are quite hard to adapt to movies or TV series, imo. If you have read him once, you probably know
Then don’t. Not everything needs to be adapted and watered down, sometimes stories just belong in their original medium.
If u ever read Asimov’s works, you would say something like “not everyone should be a writer”
I’ve read all five of the original Foundation books and most of the Robot series and Edge of Eternity. Why do you think I haven’t read him?
I do not think that you haven’t reed his books. I just meant that Asimov’s way of describing thing and writing stories stands off and it might feel hard to read.
I’m not the OP but I got a bone to pick with the way you wrote this comment.
actually think I read them, but such a long time, I doubt you were even born yet
Lmao what a weird thing to say. Congratulations on being older?
it’s too bad you can’t enjoy a production of this quality on this scale
True, I can’t enjoy a low quality show that focuses on meaningless drivel between poorly written and acted characters.
just keeps getting incrementally better with every passing episode. It’s really good televison, and the best show on tv right now
I wholeheartedly disagree on this. Even if it were good, which it really really really isn’t, shows like The Bear and Severance are on an entirely higher tier.
I agree. I grew up reading Asimov. It ignited my passion for reading and sci fi. To see how badly they’ve butchered this material is devastating. It bears almost no resemblance. Like so many Hollywood projects, the only thing it has in common with the material is some character names. Everything else is creative writing. Because of course modern writers think they’re better than Isaac Asimov.
I don’t even like Asimov’s work (his characters are awful) and what I watched of the first season of Foundation was pretty bad. I can’t imagine what fans of his books must’ve thought.
I was hoping an adaption that shored up his weaknesses in characterization while finally showing me what all the fuss was about, and I didn’t get that at all.
