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http://io9.gizmodo.com/michelle-yeoh-may-be-the-first-actor-to-join-star-trek-1789286083

For months, fans have been wondering who the new actors to join the Star Trek franchise may be, and we may now have an answer. There’s an as-yet unconfirmed report that Michelle Yeoh has been cast on Star Trek: Discovery.

The source is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer, who is a consulting producer on the show. “I know Michelle Yeoh is in it,” Meyer told Coming Soon. He wouldn’t say who she’s playing, but it’s quite possible she’s the female lead we know the show will have.

CBS, whose All-Access platform will air the show next year, told io9 they had no comment on the news, but that some of the information in the Coming Soon story was inaccurate. They would not say which information.

Yeoh is a veteran actress who first became a star in America in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. She has also starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Sunshine.

If Yeoh is indeed in the series, this is a great first step for Discovery, which will debut on CBS All Access sometime in 2017.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/more-details-on-michelle-yeohs-rumored-role-in-star-tre-1789323465?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Star Trek: Discovery

Deadline has a followup to earlier reporting from Coming Soon about Michelle Yeoh’s presence in the cast. They further confirm the actress’ involvement with the series, but also add that she is actually not a member of the Discovery’s crew.

Instead, Yeoh plays Han Bo, Captain of the (presumably Federation) starship Shenzhou—a vessel that apparently plays a prominent role in the first season of the show.

maybe she'll be a villain or a rival then ?

Oh man fi ally some good news for this show.

Some good news, huzzah.

Although, it does come off a bit Captain Asian of the USS Asian Name, I do hope they don't go full-stereotype and also make her a martial artist who drinks ceremonial tea and is also a warrior-poet etc etc. I'd hope we were past the days of Chakotay-ish characters.

Maybe the parallel suggests a closer look at the early composition of the Federation? I think the pre-Federation pan-Earth thing has always been a little too glossed over (Eugenics Wars, I know).

 Manchu wrote:
Maybe the parallel suggests a closer look at the early composition of the Federation? I think the pre-Federation pan-Earth thing has always been a little too glossed over (Eugenics Wars, I know).

We're pretty far past that point thought aren't we? It's only 10 years before Kirk and 100 years after Enterprise, you'd think humanity would be well past national identity at that stage especially given most of the technologies that would make capitalism and resource conflict obsolete will already exist by that point.

Divvying up the humans into national or continental subfactions running their own ships would be a backwards step.

Ah good point, I did not know exactly when the kick off arc was set.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Maybe the parallel suggests a closer look at the early composition of the Federation? I think the pre-Federation pan-Earth thing has always been a little too glossed over (Eugenics Wars, I know).

We're pretty far past that point thought aren't we? It's only 10 years before Kirk and 100 years after Enterprise, you'd think humanity would be well past national identity at that stage especially given most of the technologies that would make capitalism and resource conflict obsolete will already exist by that point.

Except Scotty and Chekov took pride in their heritage, and occasionally made a point of the superiority of elements of Scotland and Russia (though Chekov was more blatant about it than Scotty).

 Carlson793 wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Maybe the parallel suggests a closer look at the early composition of the Federation? I think the pre-Federation pan-Earth thing has always been a little too glossed over (Eugenics Wars, I know).

We're pretty far past that point thought aren't we? It's only 10 years before Kirk and 100 years after Enterprise, you'd think humanity would be well past national identity at that stage especially given most of the technologies that would make capitalism and resource conflict obsolete will already exist by that point.

Except Scotty and Chekov took pride in their heritage, and occasionally made a point of the superiority of elements of Scotland and Russia (though Chekov was more blatant about it than Scotty).

They took pride in their heritage, they didn't end up aboard the USS Wallace and the USS Vladimir serving under officers who were also Scottish and Russian respectively. The whole point of having a Russian, a Scot, an alien, and a black woman on the bridge crew of the Enterprise in the first place was to emphasise that humans had moved past our differences and come together to pursue something greater, that the show wasn't just "NASA 2265, God Bless America, Hooah" despite the prevalance otherwise of American actors and the inevitable Amerocentric viewpoint of some of the stories.

Although, something like, she's the first captain of the ship, therefore she got to name it, would be ok and interesting, in my view...

 Compel wrote:
Although, something like, she's the first captain of the ship, therefore she got to name it, would be ok and interesting, in my view...

Or perhaps she's a seperationist pirate, who mutinied with her exploration vessel and is now carving out a small empire on the edge of known space. Possibly dealing in military secrets to a somewhat friendly alien body. Perhaps their captain died on some planet they were ordered to survey, and that turned the crew against the federation's ideals.

Yes, I'm aware that there are other explanations for why an Asian actress playing a character with an obviously Asian name and captaining a ship with same could be happening, I was merely expressing the view that I hope one of those possible explanations isn't the case.

Perhaps the series takes place in the period of Federation history before they've achieved a post-scarcity economy, and Starfleet needed to pander to Chinese investors for funding?

Wasn't there some mention in TOS of crewmen having pay?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Perhaps the series takes place in the period of Federation history before they've achieved a post-scarcity economy, and Starfleet needed to pander to Chinese investors for funding?

Again, it's 10 years before Kirk and 100 after Enterprise. Starfleet was a global affair even before the foundation of the Federation and the United Earth government encompassed every former nation on the planet by 2150, it's now a century after Enterprise and they also have the resources of several other advanced cultures to draw on, plus even without the Replicator they've also had everything necessary for a post-scarcity society(sophisticated robotics, non-sentient AI, functionally-unlimited energy generation, access to all the resources of at least our own solar system) since around the Enterprise era as well. It's possible they were still using something along the lines of a Basic Income back in Archer's time, but after a hundred years? I don't see a plausible scenario for Starfleet having to go begging to nation states, and not even for there still being such a thing as private investors, not without some hefty retcons.

 Manchu wrote:
Wasn't there some mention in TOS of crewmen having pay?

I'm fairly sure there was, somewhere, although it may have just been one of the books... I do remember being a little confused about why they seemed to suddenly have no idea what money was in the 4th movie.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Perhaps the series takes place in the period of Federation history before they've achieved a post-scarcity economy, and Starfleet needed to pander to Chinese investors for funding?

Again, it's 10 years before Kirk and 100 after Enterprise. Starfleet was a global affair even before the foundation of the Federation and the United Earth government encompassed every former nation on the planet by 2150, it's now a century after Enterprise and they also have the resources of several other advanced cultures to draw on, plus even without the Replicator they've also had everything necessary for a post-scarcity society(sophisticated robotics, non-sentient AI, functionally-unlimited energy generation, access to all the resources of at least our own solar system) since around the Enterprise era as well. It's possible they were still using something along the lines of a Basic Income back in Archer's time, but after a hundred years? I don't see a plausible scenario for Starfleet having to go begging to nation states, and not even for there still being such a thing as private investors, not without some hefty retcons.

STOS didn't have replicators. It had synthesizers, which is substantially different. They are still an economics scarcity economy and not bound by the quasi commie mentality that infected the Picard era Federation.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Perhaps the series takes place in the period of Federation history before they've achieved a post-scarcity economy, and Starfleet needed to pander to Chinese investors for funding?

Again, it's 10 years before Kirk and 100 after Enterprise. Starfleet was a global affair even before the foundation of the Federation and the United Earth government encompassed every former nation on the planet by 2150, it's now a century after Enterprise and they also have the resources of several other advanced cultures to draw on, plus even without the Replicator they've also had everything necessary for a post-scarcity society(sophisticated robotics, non-sentient AI, functionally-unlimited energy generation, access to all the resources of at least our own solar system) since around the Enterprise era as well. It's possible they were still using something along the lines of a Basic Income back in Archer's time, but after a hundred years? I don't see a plausible scenario for Starfleet having to go begging to nation states, and not even for there still being such a thing as private investors, not without some hefty retcons.

STOS didn't have replicators. It had synthesizers, which is substantially different. They are still an economics scarcity economy and not bound by the quasi commie mentality that infected the Picard era Federation.

Which is why I said without Replicators, and then listed the things that are actually necessary to eliminate scarcity. Replicators made the elimination of scarcity convenient in a way that serviced the plot of the show, such handwavery "magic" is not actually required.

Goods have, when you break it right down, two costs - energy and labour. Raw resources only have a cost because they require labour and energy to extract and process, and because our screwy property system on this planet allows the descendents of whoever hit everyone else over the head really hard centuries or millenia ago to extract rents from land they inherited, which handily doesn't apply to resources in space. Sufficiently advanced robotics and AI remove the need for labour for everything except the most high-concept, creative, intellectual work, and even those would largely be reduced to the equivalent of knowing how to correctly parse a Google search to ask the AIs the right questions. And I'm not talking Banksian style super-intellect AIs from the Culture novels, if they have computers sophisticated enough to even approach the idea of a "universal translator", they have computers that would be sufficiently sophisticated to take over every mechanistic, repetitive aspect of work even what we consider creative or intellectual work like computer coding or pretty much every bit of the legal profession except the standing in court and lying for your client part. As for energy generation, well, they have stable antimatter reactor technology.

Once the infrastructure was built, cost would be eliminated - resources(including food) extracted(or grown & harvested) by machines powered with functionally unlimited energy from sources that don't require rents to access(ie, space), transported by same, refined by same, turned into finished goods by same, and the whole chain maintained by same and managed by AI. Everything necessary for life and interaction in the modern world - food, shelter, clothing, energy, transportation, advanced communications tech - all of it would be, functionally, free. If everyone's needs are met without cost, then labour also ceases to have any value, since the only kinds of labour that would continue to have any relevance in such a system are ones, like advanced scientific endeavours, where those expending their labour are motivated by more than merely financial reward. No living expenses combined with "the world of work" being reduced almost entirely to fields where acclaim, achievement, or the work itself are considered much higher rewards to those who work in them than money means even those fields will, inevitably, cease to have any value in a fiscal sense, since there will always be enough such people who, not having to deal with earning money to meet basic needs, will be willing to work for "free" that any commercial endeavour would be doomed to fail.

And given that it's entirely possible we'll see all of the necessary precursors appear within our own lifetimes(hell, we could do the energy bit right now with just solar, we just need automation and AI management software to catch up), the idea that they wouldn't have them in the 2200's, and that a society that has been explicitly and deliberately trying to eliminate need, war, disease etc for at that time two centuries wouldn't have taken full advantage of them, or even that they would deliberately impose artificial scarcity where none need exist, is just silly.

This is why, despite sharing quite a lot of the concerns of anti-capitalists about the short and medium term, in the long term I have a fatalistic, borderline optimistic view; in simply executing its basic, inherent function, capitalism necessarily creates the thing that will destroy it; better-than-human-efficiency automation. In the end, there are only really two plausible outcomes for humanity - "utopia"(by which I mean a technologically advanced postscarcity society, the idea a society can ever be "perfect" is juvenile) or species extinction. Because, in the end, the technology will exist to eliminate scarcity, at which point we will either A; embrace it and achieve aforementioned "utopia"(ie, the Star Trek view), B; the elites of the present system will attempt to impose artificial scarcity and when the inevitable backlash occurs we will either B1; succeed and achieve A(the Mars Trilogy view), or B2; fail and eradicate ourselves.

Its a separate thread, but STNG isn't a post scarcity economy. There's lots of evidence of it: transporter credits for rationing, production limitaitons during the war, the whole more than one person on a ship, gambling. Ok now that I think of it most my references are from Deep Space Nine.

A post scarcity economy doesn't work, because people's appetites grow with the ability of the economy to produce them. Thats occurs now.

After all communism would be great if it weren't for all the people.

 insaniak wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Wasn't there some mention in TOS of crewmen having pay?

I'm fairly sure there was, somewhere, although it may have just been one of the books... I do remember being a little confused about why they seemed to suddenly have no idea what money was in the 4th movie.

I'm watching TNG right now (as in, sequentially on Amazon... not the random episode order that cable channels do) and there have been a small number of odd mentions of money, bets and things that suggest they still have some concept of monetary value.

Let's have some Klingon War gak!

Klingons are cool!

Enough half measures. Have the federation go to war with a threat and utterly wipe it out.

Even better lets do a little Trek from the Romulan perspective.

 Frazzled wrote:
Even better lets do a little Trek from the Romulan perspective.

Heh.

Star Trek as told by Little Finger.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Yes, I'm aware that there are other explanations for why an Asian actress playing a character with an obviously Asian name and captaining a ship with same could be happening.

Well its not as if nearly every Star Trek has had an American Actor playing an American Captain (and nearly all of the crew), commanding a ship with an American name. If it wasn't for a Frenchman who sounded suspiciously English it would have been a clean sweep.

At least there is some variation here

 Frazzled wrote:
Its a separate thread, but STNG isn't a post scarcity economy.

By any standard measure they are a post scarcity economy. The error that might be at play is that a post-scarcity economy = an economy with no money, which isn't really true.

The Federation clearly has some kind of economic system, because not everything can be replicated* and even the things that can be replicated need the energy to power the replicators to begin with. Obviously building starships is impractical with replicators, so someone is funding the construction of the humanitarian armada that also happens to be armed to the teeth. The thing that makes the Federation a post scarcity society is that all the needs of its society can be met because all you need to feed, clothe, and house everyone in the Federation is sufficient energy to power the replicators, but that doesn't mean the idea of economics falls into a black hole.

It's also the particular brand of American silliness that declares a society "communist" just because it isn't capitalist. The Federation by all regards is not a communist society. Socialist yes, but there's no evidence workers own the means of production in the Federation. It's completely unclear who owns any of the Federation's infrastructure, or how what economy the Federation does have is structured. I mean, how exactly does a society that doesn't care about the accumulation of wealth negotiate a trade deal with someone like the Ferengi, who only care about the accumulation of wealth? It's never really explained. Even Starfleet's exact relationship to the Federation's political structure is unclear).

*Examples include Dilithium, Tholian Silk, and complex organisms (though that might be more illegal than impossible...). Latinum is used as a currency solely because it cannot be replicated (a technology that hilariously makes gold and gems worthless). The series also suggests that while replicators can make almost anything, they can't necessarily match non-replicated versions so presumably there would be a market out there for non-replicated goods even if replicators can make the item.

I state commmunist, I should be more accurate in saying "hippy utopia nonsense." Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet. Any economic system relying on altruism with our current genetic would implode instantly-it doesn't work outside of family units and even then it doesn't work for "unnormal" families. If we did Star Trek as humans really are WE would be Romulans.

 Frazzled wrote:
I state commmunist, I should be more accurate in saying "hippy utopia nonsense."

That would be more accurate

Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet.

To be fair, the humanity of Star Trek is explicitly stated to be a humanity that has overcome some of its worst demons

 LordofHats wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I state commmunist, I should be more accurate in saying "hippy utopia nonsense."

That would be more accurate

Gotcha, we're actually on the same page.

Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet.

To be fair, the humanity of Star Trek is explicitly stated to be a humanity that has overcome some of its worst demons

Except DS9 shows we haven't.

Except DS9 shows we haven't.

The post modernist in me would suggest that the constant insistence by humans that they've overcome their baser instincts is just a ideological facade used to cover the gradual political and cultural domination of humans over the rest of the galaxy, but that's probably just a load of crock. Everyone knows there's no post-modernism in the 24th century. They're on post-post-post modernism

 LordofHats wrote:

Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet.

To be fair, the humanity of Star Trek is explicitly stated to be a humanity that has overcome some of its worst demons

Or.... to be fair, when faced with annihilation by Klingon or by Romulan (IIRC, those were the two mentioned by Edison in ST: Beyond that were unfriendly, and encountered pre-Federation)... AND having just come out of a planet spanning global war, it kinda makes sense.

I kinda picture them as post-ww2 Europeans in that, after WW2, the bulk of the countries sat out of, or had VERY limited participation in the various adventures we got up to... and I've seen some books and articles suggesting that after WW2, Europeans had basically finally had enough, and had generally realized how dumb war kind of is.

 Frazzled wrote:
I state commmunist, I should be more accurate in saying "hippy utopia nonsense." Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet. Any economic system relying on altruism with our current genetic would implode instantly-it doesn't work outside of family units and even then it doesn't work for "unnormal" families. If we did Star Trek as humans really are WE would be Romulans.

Speak for yourself!