Star Trek

FOX NEWS

An image of Deep Space Nine being hit by a laser while Homer Simpson screams and Tucker Carlson looks mildly perturbed.

Red alert! Fox Corporation, the parent company of the Fox network and Fox News, is currently engaged in a $1.6 billion legal battle with Dominion Voting Systems that could potentially destroy the entertainment titan and bring an end to The Simpsons as we know it.

The Dominion suit alleges warped priorities led Fox News to amplify defamatory and highly illogical claims regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, causing “diminution of enterprise value” for the electronic voting machine manufacturer. Text messages and emails gathered from Fox News employees in discovery were recently made public, exposing management’s reluctance to reign in their defiant fleet of star anchors, including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, lest the network incur the wrath of conservative viewers. Rupert Murdoch, one of the founders of the news channel, privately admitted “maybe Sean and Laura went too far” in letting their impulses drive coverage.

Fox News has long been a ratings crusher and cable star dating back to its launch in 1996, but times are changeling. Data shows traditional linear television is in steady decline as more people cut the cord, and any resistance to this trend is likely futile. After the election, Fox News’s monthly ratings fell behind its longtime nemesis CNN for the first time in decades, a stunning feat suggesting the normally unphased network may need to augment its programming strategy in order to cling on to as many viewers as possible. The next generation of competitors, a pack lead by Newsmax, threatens to beam away Fox’s fracturing audience by catering to a menagerie of Q supporters and other fringe groups. Although it remans the number one news network, the primary directive for Fox News will be to try courting the pro-insurrection crowd while not alienating mainstream conservatives or advertisers, a balancing act of terrific sensitivity that could develop into a no-win scenario. Adding to the chaos, lobbying chief O’Brien departed the company earlier this month, leaving Fox without the experienced Washington voyager as it potentially enters a strange new world of tricky political terrain.

The fate of The Simpsons is greatly linked to Fox’s fortunes, as it is reliant on the network bearing the costs of its production. I’m no diviner, but if Fox News falls into darkness and Fox Corporation suddenly finds itself strapped for cash, the animated series could be headed to the great beyond. Disney purchased the motion picture studio behind The Simpsons from Fox in 2019, so under the rules of acquisition they would have the option to take it elsewhere or make it a Disney+ original series, were the Fox network to cancel the show. However, The Simpsons has enjoyed a long and prosperous life on Fox, a historical feat unlikely to be replicated, and if that day comes the crew may simply decide it’s a good day for the series to die.

NEWS ROUNDUP

A collage of random Simpsons-related pictures.

Howdy pard’ners, this here’s a roundup of Simpsons news items from all over yonder.

  • Chris Ledesma, the show’s music editor since the series began, has left the show. Although it’s not regularly updated anymore, his blog Simpsons Music 500 was super-informative if you’re into TV production minutae. For example, here’s a post about music spotting notes. [Matt Selman/Twitter]
  • Back in 1990, the producers insisted the Simpsons aren’t Toons, although Matt Groening joked “they could be in Roger Rabbit 3!” OK, so the new Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie isn’t exactly Roger Rabbit 3, and the Simpsons technically don’t appear in it, but I’m still gonna say that was a prescient call. [Rolling Stone]
  • If you’re a parent who’s sick of the absolute filth on Disney+, the Parents Television and Media Council has helpfully provided a list of alternatives, including Daily Wire Kids. [PTC]
  • Apparently Rick & Morty exists in Star Trek canon, but whether or not The Simpsons does remains unclear. [Digital Spy]
  • Remember the hulabaloo when Hulu announced yet another revival of Futurama and voice actor John DiMaggio (Bender, Randy) was holding out for more money, before finally signing on? Well, he recently admitted at a convention that he was unsuccessful in that regard, saying “trying to get money out of Disney is like trying to get blood from a stone.” [/Film]
RDRR REPORT

An image of characters from Star Trek: Prodigy admiring floor pie.

In the opening moments of the latest episode of Star Trek: Prodigy, the characters experiment with transporting a piece of pie throughout the USS Protostar, leading Jason Mantzoukas’s character Jankom Pog to remark “Mmm, floor pie,” a clear reference to a classic Simpsons moment (also, a clear ADR line). The Simpsons, of course, has made hundreds if not thousands of references to Star Trek over the decades, but as far as I know (which is admittedly very little, as I’m not a big Trek fan and am mostly just cribbing from Memory Alpha) this is the first time the latter franchise has reciprocated. Which made me start to wonder: does The Simpsons exist in the Star Trek universe?

Just to be clear, there is zero possibility Jankom Pog was consciously quoting an Earth TV show that theoretically would’ve premiered nearly four centuries prior to his birth, especially considering the first human he’s ever seen is a hologram of Captain Janeway. That doesn’t necessarily mean the show didn’t exist. If it did, though, it raises all sorts of questions:

Was the team at Gracie Films still cranking out classics like “Kamp Krusty” as the Eugenics Wars ravaged the globe? Did The Simpsons serve as a form of escapism for audiences in the relatively unaffected United States? Would vacation episodes still be as common with much of the world controlled by genetically engineered despots? Were people quoting their favorite Homer lines as they attempted to flee The Augments? Would it still be possible for Bill Oakley to write the “Steamed Hams” segment, knowing full well that 35 million people were being killed in a massive international conflict? Was production halted at the South Korean animation studio Akom when Khan Noonien Singh conquered Asia, or did he allow them to continue? Was he, perhaps, a fan of the show? What about Marla McGivers, the Enterprise’s historian from the 1967 episode “Space Seed” – does her 1990s expertise include Bartmania? If the show did exist, would it still be considered an exemplary work of art by surviving TV critics? Would it still be revered as such in the age of the Federation? Could the Holodeck feature a Simpsons program alongside programs based on Sherlock Holmes and Jane Eyre?

Given that Star Trek and The Simpsons are owned by separate media conglomerates, it is unlikely that we will ever receive an official, canonical answer. But’s it’s certainly something to think about.