Neptune And The Entertainment Industry, Part Three: The Future

(This is the third in a series about Neptune and the entertainment industry. CLICK HERE for Part One, and CLICK HERE for Part Two.)


L. Q. “SONNY” CLEMONDS (a traveller from the early 21st Century, now on the USS Enterprise in the 24th Century): Let’s see if the Braves are on. How do you turn on this teevee?
COMMANDER RIKER: TV?
SONNY: Yeah, the boob tube. I’d like to see how the Braves are doing after all this time. Probably still finding ways to lose.
LT. COMMANDER DATA: I believe he means “television,” sir. That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year two thousand forty.
SONNY: Well, what do you guys do? I mean, you don’t drink, and you ain’t got no TV. Must be kind of boring, ain’t it?


In the first two parts of this series, I covered how the Huge Mess of 2020 has caused big problems for the entertainment industry. Those problems appear to getting worse in some ways. Theater chains have closed. Warner Brothers announced that its entire 2021 schedule will be released in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously. Disneyland is struggling with a phased reopening that isn’t expected to make much of a difference. In light of all this, is there hope for the entertainment industry as we know it?

Consider this: Neptune spends a long stretch of time — between 2021 and 2024 — oscillating back and forth between a sextile to Uranus and a sextile to Pluto. Can you imagine anything that could represent a more transformative era for all things Neptunian than that?

Besides, the concept of “entertainment” is much larger than your definition of it or mine. It’s part of our wiring as humans. Even if society were to completely collapse, we’d soon learn again to tell stories and make shadow puppets and paint on cave walls and carve flutes out of bones.

Hey: now that might make for an entertaining story…