But ratings are different from profits! A show can be very highly rated and unprofitable. And that’s precisely what Times article describes. It also goes into the shifts in viewership that are likely responsible for the loss of revenue and profitability. McDonald’s wouldn’t keep selling the Big Mac at a loss… they’d either hike the price, cut the cost, or stop selling it. It sounds like CBS was trying to improve the situation but the gap was widening, not narrowing. How long do you expect them to lose money on the show before cancelling it?

I am a fan of the show and am sad it was cancelled. But if you look at the facts, it’s far more likely that this happened due to financial reasons.

While the timing does feel suspicious, it’s pretty unlikely that it was an implicit or explicit part of the settlement. According to NYT it’s been losing money for years, despite having good ratings:

“The Late Show,” a fixture of the network for over three decades, was racking up losses of tens of millions of dollars a year, and the gap was growing fast, according to two people familiar with the show’s finances.

…

“The Late Show” began losing money at least three years ago, two people familiar with the finances said.

While sometimes losses make sense in business (eg Costco’s $1.50 hot dogs), I doubt this was one of those cases. I personally think the cancellation was a separate decision, though still related to the Skydance acquisition, because they probably wanted to cut unprofitable shows in order to improve their valuation.

I think the bigger issue is that it’s so believable that this could have been a quid pro quo! When you pay $16 million to settle a meritless lawsuit with the president as a bribe so your business deal goes through… you’ve lost all credibility. You’re shown you’re willing to bend the knee to the self-appointed “king”.

I’m not enjoying hearing one of my preferred pop culture references being explained like you’re a fucking museum tour guide lol

That’s a fair criticism and I’m not telling you your opinion on the show is wrong. But Discovery did have its fans, and I think it’s disrespectful to them and especially the cast & crew to say they deserved to get the Enterprise ending treatment, just because you didn’t enjoy the show.

The dislike of Discovery is a totally valid opinion, but this is a poor & disrespectful take. The show did a lot. I enjoyed it, even if it wasn’t my top trek show. Any trek deserves a proper, respectful send-off. You can point at the finale that we got and say that it wasn’t great, but honestly what do you expect with a few extra pages of writing and barely any shooting time? The actors and writers deserved an opportunity to actually end things properly, and instead they were given next to nothing and they did their best to make do.

Stories like Reid Tomasko’s - and others who’ve had Tesla buy back their defective Cybertrucks - highlight how the EV ownership journey can take unexpected turns.

I wish they wouldn’t conflate these dumpsters with EVs as a whole.

I like this idea a lot, it might become my new head cannon!

Possibly. But how much more wear & tear would this be compared to the wear put on the warp drive, which gets incredibly frequent use? If that warp drive can withstand it, why not the shield emitters?

Yeah, I think the power-saving argument (#4) is potentially strongest, especially if the plot needs it to be for a given episode.

But I’m having trouble thinking of a situation in the shows where the maneuverability was limited by the shields. Certainly there are plenty of cases where power was routed to shields, maybe even the power that was meant for propulsion. But I think in general, those would be cases where power was already limited, or the need for defense was much higher. In general, I don’t think I recall a trade-off where shields restrict maneuverability or speed.

I totally agree that I love the variety of options! But I would be very happy if one of the options was that we get filler/bottle episodes for a few weeks per season, but every season is 26 episodes long. They could just spread the budget for 10 episodes across all 26, and make the VFX less… shiny.

(Of course, I don’t actually want actors to be worked to the bone like they were in the 90s…)

A pretty cool episode. Top takeaways:

1. I’m going to miss Captain Ransom. I think it would have been fun to have a season or two of him. Only Discovery has had the balls to hand over the Captain’s chair to another during its main run, and I think that is a good thing.
2. Starbase 80 is now set up as a new DS9-style show. A starbase guarding a dimensional portal. God I hope that happens. I just hope they pull off the ensemble cast that made DS9 such a classic.
3. I hate the tease for Rutherford x Tendi, it’s so mean to tease it in the finale :'( But really it’s so cute.

Plenty more I missed of course.

Rewatching in preparation for the finale, and I keep feeling that the voice of Curzon Dax sounds quite similar to the voice of Odo in DS9. I’m quite aware that Rene Auberjonois passed away not that long ago: may he rest in peace. And I guess he was voiced by Fred Tatasciore (Shaxs), which I can hear too. But I keep hearing Odo which is really nice.

Enjoy your fascist dictator then

Yes? I’m not saying Michigan handed him the election, I’m saying protest votes and no-votes played a big role. We’re fucked due in part to people who say “ooh that will show the DNC”

Look, it’s such an exhausting night, and I really do believe that you want to see a better world. I do too.

I’m just so shattered that we’re looking at four years of chipping away at the rights of women, LGBT, and transgender people. Four years of degrading all the checks and balances against the president. Four years of political retaliations going unchecked. Four years of aggressive anti-climate policy, inhumane border policy, and pandering to a Russia (and now North Korea!) that is also slaughtering innocents in Ukraine. Four years of middle east policy that is at least as bad as Biden/Harris’s, but likely far worse. And four years of slamming our economy with tariffs to “own the Chinese” I guess.

A vote for Harris was a vote to make things better. Not everything. Good lord she wasn’t the answer to so many major issues facing the US and the world. But it was an objectively better vote, by every metric, than a vote for Trump, or a no-vote. I just can’t argue any more on that.

In many elections, that would make sense. But in this election, there was a sizeable group of Nikki Haley Republicans up for grabs, who clearly didn’t want to vote Trump if they could get an alternative. Is there a group of leftists who may have turned out in larger numbers if Harris had swung left? Yeah, maybe. But is that group anywhere near as large as the Haley Republicans, and are they present in swing states? No and no.

One Cheney convert in a swing state is worth a dozen liberals like me in California lol. Swinging right is the rational political move for the leftmost candidate. Swinging left is the rational political move for the rightmost candidate, which is why we saw Trump clumsily try to soften his stance on abortion.

I mean, I do? Trump massively outperformed Harris in swing states, so clearly Harris’s campaign wasn’t able to meet swing state voters where they are. Literally, these were the only people who matter in the US election under the current rules (sadly). Of course Harris swung right, and of course it didn’t work well enough, but not doing it would have been worse…

I hate politics as much as the next person, but god damn. Recognize the game is what it is, play it as necessary, and then move the needle where you can. Sheesh.

Watch an episode of DS9 maybe? Sisko is the literal embodiment of a person who is willing to make the tough choice that he personally finds unethical, but knows will be better for the world as a whole.

So then the logic here is “vote for a candidate who is at least as bad for Gaza, but will also fuck up the rest of the world”. Or “don’t vote for the candidate who will be obviously less damaging for the rest of the world, even though my action won’t help Gaza at all”.

Even if you assume Harris would have been just as bad for Gaza… I mean it’s patently clear that the only choice is to vote for the lesser of two evils and then raise hell that you need better policies from them.