Should Star Trek Die? 703
securitas writes "The New York Times Television reporter William S. Kowinski writes about questions of the Star Trek franchise's viability due to overexposure, audience fatigue and creative exhaustion. Star Trek actor and director LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge) is in favor of a hiatus, and is quoted as saying, 'Star Trek's just not special enough, not anymore.... They need to shut the whole thing down, wait five years, create an interest, an excitement, a hunger for it again.' Also quoted are Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and executive producer Rick Berman. The article is particularly salient given the recent announcement of Star Trek Online, a massively multiplayer online game scheduled to launch in 2007. Remember that Activision sued Viacom over the Star Trek franchise last year, ending the license despite a 10-year licensing agreement that originally expired in 2008. So the question is: Should Star Trek die?"
Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, when has anything really just DIED?! Technology gets reborn into newer applications, fads resurface, trends rise and fall. Quit it with the incessant death babble.
If you don't know... (Score:5, Interesting)
A) Shouldn't be on Slashdot
iii) Aren't qualified to talk about any Trek, because you missed the only two good series in the franchise
Enterprise is a great show. They just need to divorce the Star Trek name from it. Great sci-fi, but it doesn't belong anywhere in the Trek timeline.
Yep (Score:5, Interesting)
I would have to agree (Score:3, Interesting)
What they should focus on is Babylon 5. I think the B5 universe as a whole has much more depth than the Star Trek universe. I just got done digging up a lot of the made for TV B5 movies even with bad production value they were quite good.
When the creater of B5 croaks, so should the franchise. While he's alive, I want more!
Do Not Resuscitate order (Score:3, Interesting)
I watched the original Star Trek (TOS) as a kid, and I was captivated and stimulated by the series of new and amazing things it revealed: scientific wonders, new forms of life, alien cultures, and above all the feeling of adventure "out there" among the stars.
Trek TNG followed this formula pretty well, although it became too immersed in "technology" plots - how many variations on the holodeck plot can they expect us to endure?
DS9's theme was more political, exploring the various relations between the Federation, the Bajorans, and the Cardassians - and, to a lesser extent, the Klingons and the Ferengi. This variation on the theme seemed to bore a lot of people, but it seemed to me it produced some of the best writing of all the Trek series.
Voyager was where I seriously began to lose interest. The "journey home" theme - a kind futuristic retelling of the Odyssey was a good foundation to build on, but the series never seemed to take advantage of its potential. You know that a Trek series is failing at its primary mission when the producers feel the need to add cheesecake like Seven just to prop up its ratings.
Enterprise? They've lost me and I can't even bring myself to watch it. Don't even know its regular time slot. For my sci-fi fix I now turn to Stargate *, and reruns of Farscape, DS9, and Babylon 5. Oh, and I have great hopes for Battlestar Galactica - the human race fighting for its survival is a hugely compelling theme, and from the looks of the premier, the SciFi channel wants to do it right.
Yes, Star Trek needs to be put to sleep, or at least into a deep coma. I don't even have to RTFA to tell you my opinion on this.
Star Trek did die (Score:3, Interesting)
What we see nowadays is a soap opera in Star Trek clothes.
All new Trek-series made after 1991 have been pure BS. There have been only about 2-3 good episodes per season. I'm personally ashamed what Star Trek has become.
What series' did you watch? (Score:5, Interesting)
In all of those, however (even being a Trek fan), I fail to see any semblance of a cerebral root.
My Breakup with Star Trek (Score:3, Interesting)
A while ago, I wrote a quiet little rant about how I broke up with Star Trek [inter.net].
I think a hiatus would be a very good thing. It just might make my heart grow fonder. But I'm not holding my breath.
Re:I would have to agree (Score:3, Interesting)
films films films films (Score:2, Interesting)
5 tos films 4 or 5 Next gen films.
so, they're behind by 5 DS9 films & 5 Voyager films... That's 10 films to worry about, and only a few years until they have to worry about Enterprise too.
What I propose is this. 1)Take a hiatus from making series' after Enterprise season4. For ooh 5 or 6 years. 2)Do 1 or 2 films with Each of DS9 & Voyager and another 1 or 2 with both of them (and the Enterprise, Riker's new ship, the USS illustrious et al). Ok, these would probably be a special effects fest rather than a heart-wrenching story, but that's what sensible people like.
Note, they onyl actually need 6 story lines in 5 years, even Bermann could think of that... Species 8472 anyone?
Then, when we're all desperate for a series after having been kept interested by a steady drip of films, they can start making a new series with the USS Illustrious as the principle ship.
Well, that's what I'd like to watch, but I'm probably in a minority.
No, I'm not going to tell you what the USS Illustrious is.
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Tits & Ass (Score:2, Interesting)
ST is wearing a Red Shirt (Score:2, Interesting)
But is it really the case that ST has gotten worse? I would agree to some extent it has. But I think what many posters overlook is that we the audience/fans and SF have both matured in our tastes.
After watching Babylon 5 and Firefly and Farscape, can you honestly say even TOS or TNG measures up? We have experienced better writing and stories and , dare I say it, acting, than Trek has offered and now when we see any Trek we judge it by our newer, more refined sense of what SF can be.
To some extent even SG1 is trying to reach up, or at least it was trying prior to Atlantis. I will give it time to work it out, though.
The problem with Trek now is that the writers and producers recognize that better SF has been and continues to be made by others, but instead of doing better jobs themselves they sometimes just superficially copy the themes or ideas of the other shows or even past Trek stories instead of coming up with something original (B5 vs. DS9 , way too much time-travel, etc.)
Let me finish by saying, I think Trek has devolved into a formulaic, techno-babble solution in the last 10 minutes of every episode, gee didn't we all just learn a valuable politically correct lesson, pile of special effects with patterned characters and plot/continuity issues to fill several nit-pickers books.
But I also think that the very reason we recognize it as such, is that we are now smarter SF consumers. Good and even great SF films and TV have shown us what we should expect from the genre, and Trek just has not moved to meet these new, higher expectations. pfft...end of rant
Perhaps if the writing was better.... (Score:3, Interesting)
GJC
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
They do focus on technobable entirely too much, and they forget what the hell ST really is: A soap opera for nerds, with social commentary that questions the status quo. Once you get away from that, it gets weak. Its not about taking sides on current issues, its about raising issues and letting the viewers debate it. Also, just ONCE I would like to see them shut the Autodestruct down with more than 1 second left... Showing dumb luck as just dumb luck would also be more realistic.
The Xindi thing was good, although I agree its about time to move on. I DO really like the way Archer has to face a bunch of moral questions, and the response is usually realistic. IE: Yes, what we will do is wrong, but the world is not so black and white, and we have to survive. Again, its the story, not the do-dads and special effects that make the show.
Oh yea, and although I am a bit insulted by the overt sexuality of T'Pol, I would still savor the opportunity to bring out a little emotion in her, if ya know what I mean
Re:Star Trek tech coming true... (Score:3, Interesting)
But yes, maybe they should take Star Trek into the future with new discoveries and more advanced tech. What would it take to put in a wow-factor, with new technology that is unheard of not only in everyday life, but little known in mainstream skiffy today?
The thing about Trek is that the technology you see there is put there as a Swiss army knife to give the writers the highest degree of freedom possible. Want to not waste time on travel? Transporter. Not waste time on setting up communications? Communicator. A story about the old West or today? Timetravel and holodeck.
Then there's the unlimited supply of new races and the reset button, but that's not a technology issue.
I like the replicators. I like the replicators.
That's something that's just about as far away from achievable as the transporter is. But it could introduce new issues of copyright violation
Sersiously, I don't think the lack of flashy gadgets is Trek's biggest problem. It's how the technology is used to tell a story about the human condition, how we embrace technology and deal with each other.
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
What made DS9 the best (my opinion) was how it didn't ignore what was happening around it. In TOS and TNG I got the feeling like as soon as some good issues got raised, they were off to some other planet (usually EXACTLY LIKE EARTH except for ONE CRAZY DIFFERENCE).
Maybe ENT shouldn't have created the Xindi. Maybe they should have focused on the important events happening to the people of Earth? Things are changing quickly in their world just like ours. And they wouldn't have to shit all over Star Trek lore to do it.
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:4, Interesting)
TOS was too campy, NextGen was too stateless. DS9 was painful when it started, losing me before they got into the long-story-arc thing once Babylon 5 showed that audiences would follow such a story.
Don't know why, but it appeals to me and I enjoy watching it. I still watch Voyager in syndication... not daily, but a couple times a week.
And just to prove to you all that I'm a total crack-pot, I'll also cop to liking Dharma and Greg.
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why I sometimes think that aquiring the prestige of a cultural icon should kick you over into public domain faster. Otherwise, it's only natural that people will spend far too long "milking" it, when, justifiably, they've already made their money- Star Wars being another good example.
I think, if your goal was not to milk the series, but to create the best conditions under which an interesting Star Trek movie/series/book/whatever would be most likely to be made, you'd just open the intellectual property up to whoever wanted to do something with it. A lot of crap would be made, but maybe some really good stuff too. Of course, you can't expect someone holding such a "hot property" to give it up on their own accord.
Too Inbred to branch the storyline (Score:2, Interesting)
Compare to Babylon 5 for instance; admittedly ran for a lot less time, but there were tons of options for offshoots there that were never tapped. (And yeah, the ones JMS did choose to branch on may not have been as interesting as they could of, but that's another story...)
Even if you leave the really cool stuff like shadows, vorlons, etc. alone, there are tons of things that could be developed, such as the Psicorps stuff, all those minor races you saw but never heard a lot of detail on, and even the major races such as Narn or Centauri could have been the subject of a spinoff w/o (IMO) overexposing them.
Turn the page.... (Score:2, Interesting)
What made Star Trek great is that rode a wave. At the time it portrayed a positive view of the future that we wanted to see, mixed in with some good ole 50's esque SciFi plots.
I'm not sure the next Star Trek is really meant for die hard Trekkers, since we all have varying views as what we want.
But I think it's time for Star Trek to turn the page. The 5 year mission of exploration as a structure for the stories is kinda broken. I didn't really get into ST:TNG until season 3 when the characters were established and I started to see what was going to happen to them next.
Somehow Trek has to turn the page. Maybe eschewing starships for a mass transit / wormhole system (I know it's not SG1, but that's the tuff part.) Maybe it's time to take some of those old universe shattering story lines and let the Trek universe have a "shocking change". Not just the Klingons becoming an ally, of sorts, but something that changes the entire context of the stories.
That always seemed the weird part of Star Trek, they kept meeting/finding people or technology that could change "everything" and nothing changed.
The only other thought I could think of would be a montage of "mini-series". Look through the multiverse of star trek literature out there and pick a few of the gems of smaller stories and make some mini series or episodes out of those. See what takes off, see what doesn't. Allow the stories to stand by themselves, and not always have a continuation.
Re:Um... (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Polarize the hull plating. (Unless everyone attacks them with alpha particles, what can this possibly do?)
3) Over-reliance on time travel. TOS wasn't exactly time traveless, there had to be 5 or 6 involving it... but every other episode of Enterprise uses this stupid cliche.
4) Even more de-scary-ification of the borg. They went from unstoppable, barely outrunnable mindless drones, to something that this crew can chase down and nail. I thought Voyager ruined them, but damn...
5) Stupid science, particularly unclever captain and officers. It's not enough to have a bad lightning storm, it becomes a "polaric" something or other.
6) Bizarre political contrivances. OK, the vulcans are a little annoyed with humanity, even less than friendly. But when the the bomb comes through yet another FTL contrivance, not a single vulcan ship is there to defend us? Certainly they could try, and leave before they themselves would be destroyed by it. Hell, there are more than a few vulcans on the planet at that point...
7) Xindi tests. They keep setting off proto-types to get things right, but because Berman is an ijit, they test the first on earth, presumably just to tip us off. Maybe they want to give earth a fighting chance.
8) Zero character development. For god's sake, even Andromeda has characters that grow and learn, and exist outside of their duty to the ship.
9) The need to wrap things up at the end of the show. Even when they do character development for instance (or what passes for it), it always resolves in the last 5 minutes of the show.
10) Reluctance to develop any minor crew characters. What's the deal, if they do that, they have to start paying these guys guild actor rates?
11) Insistence on tying in every damn thing that the other series did. Let's see, romulans, klingons, borg, Risa, Enterprise E, and a host of others.
12) Generally shitty writing. Take the worst writing from TNG, multiplied by ST1:TMP, plus the cashing in of Voyager... times 1000. This is the best Enterprise episode. The worst... oh god.
13) Berman
14) Braga
Trek is fine, the Exec Producers are NOT (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:5, Interesting)
A few that I can recall offhand:
- Throughout the entire series, a lot of time was spent discussing what is basically Artificial Intelligence in the form of the ship's doctor. Over the course of the show, this 'program' develops a personality and actually some creativity, and at least one Voyager episode is a court case that closely parallels a recent real mock trial (although here the AI is arguing for life instead of the ownership of its intellectual property) http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0594.html?p
- Another aspect of the show is the characterization, which I felt is much better than previous Trek series. Capt. Janeway has to make some quite tough decisions, and the series finale is perhaps the most interesting episode for her as she encounters a future self and has to defend her decision to protect millions of strangers' lives at the risk of her own crew/family. This theme repeats throughout.
- The whole Borg thing was quite well explored, in my honest opinion (although it may be better so in DS9). Some people seem pissed that the Borg aren't all-powerful, but really, apart from the Species 8472, they don't face much real competition. The destruction of some of their collective at the end of Voyager is reflecting another long-lived Trek theme, individuality vs. the collective (and of course, individuality comes out ahead here - good or no, but that's what it was about).
It wasn't perfect, but overall I felt that the characters offered more to care about than previous Treks. I enjoyed the TNG crew, and was amused by the Western antics of the TOS crew, but Voyager actually had me caring about more than one character (I only found Picard interesting in TNG, and Spock was the main reason to watch TOS for me).
This is all quite personal, and I'm sure people quite disagree; however, I think that people might appreciate Voyager more if they paid more attention to the characters and less to the technology.
Things I'd do to revitalize Star Trek (Score:2, Interesting)
This story, like many long standing Sci-Fi shows, (Star Wars, Farscape, Stargate, X-Files, B5, etc...) create a mythology with it's story telling. Berman and Braga have consistently compromised that mythology for the sake of ratings. "It's our idea of it, so we'll make changes any time we want." Sci-Fi viewers are technical people; they like things that make sense to them. Screw up timelines and mythology with your "reinvention" and those fans go away.
2.) Let Manny Coto take a stab at Enterprise. He seems to get the idea that mythology and timelines are important. Let Coto deal with the rest of the run of Enterprise.
3) Wait 3 years before putting out a feature film and a new series. 3 years should be enough time to get fans interested in something new.
4) Hire Nicholas Meyer to direct and write the next Star Trek feature. His movies, not only being the most successful, but his stories seemed to capture exactly what Roddenberry wanted to expose the world to; human stories wrapped up in the distant future dealing with simple subjects, twisted with complex situations.
5) Release the Movie 3 weeks before the release of the TV show, and bill them both together with trailers in movie theaters.
6) Find a good cross-section of existing and new sci-fi writers, and give them a shot at creating character stories for the new series, like JMS or Nick Sagan, or Joss Whedon, or even Shatner (not a half-bad writer with his Tek-War series).
7) Build an audience with another strong Sci-Fi influenced show. Nobody seems to be doing the "blocks" of TV shows anymore together.
Buffy and Angel on the same night was a guarantee for Sci-Fi fans to be tuning in.
8) Most important of all...Pay attention to the fans. Sift through some of the conjecture, and find some common opinions from fans that will guide how you build both a movie and a new series.
Berman and Braga have visibly shown that fans should have no bearing on their attempt at storytelling. This is the reason that Trek has gotten where it is.
"It's better to burn out than fade away"
From which movie and which song?
Brainee28
Tell Nemoy to Shut the Frakes Up (Score:2, Interesting)
Definitely not. They've bled them dry and if Voyager and Enterprise are any indication of where the series is headed, then by all means, no more tv shows.
Should there be another Trek Movie?
Not until Jonathan Frakes is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.
No matter about the movies and tv series, the Fandom will rock on under it's own steam for another few decades or until every last series is out of syndication and even then I'm not really sure that the Fandom can die.
People will still have conventions and websites and the multiplayer game if they want the "Star Trek Experience", speaking of which, has anyone visited Deep Space Nine in Las Vegas?
At any rate, Leonard Nemoy is the last person to look to for objective commentary on whether the franchise would die. He's been campaigning for it to die in one way or another since "The Search for Spock". I guess being an icon sucks but if he no longer wants to participate he should just quit showing up at conventions and crap instead of putting on the "woe-is-me" act.
No...Rick Berman should retire... (Score:2, Interesting)
I feel Rick Berman is killing the franchise. I believe him to be all about the $$$.
A few main things killing the franchise:
1) Lack of creativity. Although Enterprise has shown some.
2) Failure to adhere to cannon. So often now it seems like in order to have a plot the writers toss out previous cannon. Often contradicting the orinal series. This irks die-hard fans in hopes of garnering newer weaker fans.
3) Failure to integrate the Treks. I am sorry I can sit down and within an hour come up with more decent plots than Rick Berman has in 5 yrs.
a) ENTERPRISE EPISODE: Time travel back to medieval age to encounter Merlin "Q" (John DeLancie)
b) MOVIE: ST:TNG Enterprise destroyed. Crew enroute to starbase on Excelsior class. Encounter new Romulan ship generating a wormhole. 4 warbirds uncloak as hailing message from Commander Sela (Tasha Yar's daughter). She explains that they plan to send the ship back to destroy the Enterprise C before the Khitomer massacre. Picard creates a distraction allowing Geordi and Data to beam aboard the new Romulan ship. Meanwhile, Data see Tasha Yar being hauled away and must make a decision to save her or not. They manage to destroy the Romulan ship that generated the wormhole. This collapses the wormhole and the remaining temporal energies cast the Enterprise C into the future. (Thus explaining the episode in ST:TNG.) This was originally conceived after "Generations" and is not really possible with the loss of Data.
c) SERIES: Star Trek: Empires - this series would re-juvinate the Star Trek franchise. Follows two ships (alternating weekly) one a Romulan warship and another a Klingon warship. Episodes can diverge from the traditional "perfect world". The series would be a two year limited series. Imagine watching a diplomacy situation in which the Klingon crew decides to handle things with a planetary bombardment of the colony's moon killing 40 million inhabitants? very atypical from the normal view of Star Trek. (Yes, Klingon humor would make this much more of an adult show.) The 2-yr story arc would result in the re-unification of Romulans and Vulcan and explore a lot of the history. Including a a multi-part story arc to the exodus and the witnessing of the Vulcan mindlords and the arisal of logic.
Just imagine an episode each in which we see how "Q" toys with the Klingons and the Romulans. *lol*
d) ENTERPRISE EPISODE: Caught on a warp wave and brought far into the unknown reaches. The Enterprise encounters an advanced alien race of humanoids. Benevelont, wise, kind, even a willingness to share technology in a mentoring program. Discussions to retrofit the Enterprise with more advanced warp systems and send along a mentoring group occur and all seems perfect until they are informed of a change of plans. Apparently, said race is engaged in a war and are losing. Their main protective defenses have been breached and it's only a matter of time before the enemy reaches their homeworld. The alien race decides that giving Enterprise advanced technologies would be too dangerous without their ability to help to mentor the younger earthlings. They do debate and decide to have one of their ships return the Enterprise to it's own space. The council also decides to launch the prototype of the great weapon. The final version of the weapon is not expected to be ready for several years. On the screen in the council room one can see a comparison of the prototype weapon and the much much larger but only half constructed "Great Weapon". (The prototype being none other than the "Doomsday Machine"...a.k.a. The Killer Ice Cream Cone from ST:TOS.) The Enterprise is returned. Meanwhile...Captain Archer sits with the alien captain as they watch their homeworld being attacked and destroyed by a strange "cube-like" structure. (Yes...the Borg.) This plot may need a slight time shift (easily explain by the warp wave). And would really be a pre-cursor to the Vendetta novel.
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Star Trek was good when Gene was alive and kept "interfering" with its direction.
For it to become good again, Rick Berman must die.
He'll never let go, he'll never admit he's wrong, he'll never stop dilluting it and killing every part of it that was good, leaving only an empty husk that looks like star trek, but isn't.
I don't have any mod points right now... (Score:2, Interesting)
We Would All Watch It, If It Was Good -- New Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Um... (Score:3, Interesting)
Star Trek has potential, no one denies this. Maybe the title should be "Should Berman and Braga die (painfully) ?".
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree, TOS looks dated today because you've gotten used to much, much more sophisticated shows. Bear in mind it was made in the 60s and the world was very very different back then.
DS9 will remain the best Star Trek, unless they can figure out a way to top it. I think it could have easily gone on another 7 series if they'd not decided to end it. Such a shame.
Voyager wasn't too bad, some of the episodes sucked but there where a few gems in there ("Year of Hell" is one). It was certainly comparable to TNG, which I really enjoyed.
Enterprise should just be cancelled and disowned
I think ST should just go on hiatus for a few years, the world will change again (like it did between TOS and TNG) and fresh ideas will surface.
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:5, Interesting)
A few that I can recall offhand:
- Throughout the entire series, a lot of time was spent discussing what is basically Artificial Intelligence in the form of the ship's doctor. Over the course of the show, this 'program' develops a personality and actually some creativity, and at least one Voyager episode is a court case that closely parallels a recent real mock trial (although here the AI is arguing for life
Yeah, hmmm, TNG did the exact same thing with Data, trial and all.
Its sad when you're ripping yourself off.
The whole Borg thing was quite well explored, in my honest opinion
See, here, you're not making any kind of sense.
TNG Borg: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, one, ONE Borg Cube defeated the entire Federation fleet and was only stopped by daring and clever hacking.
Voy Borg: A single lost Federation ship without ressources defeats the ENTIRE DAMN COLLECTIVE. Pussyfication galore!
individuality vs. the collective
Was explored in depth in TNG with Hugh, "I Borg" and the follow ups.
Voyager rehashed it.
I felt that the characters offered more to care about than previous Treks.
Kess. Was supposed to age very fast. After 3 years, they realised they had only untied her hair while she should have aged by about 30 human years. Also, they realised by that time that they had to cross Borg space, a daunting task. How did they solve these problems? MAGIC! Kess becomes Q-like, flings Voyager to the other side of Borg space (but no farther, that would have been too convenient), decides she's too hot for them, leaves, and they get a replacement babe in the same show. That disgusted me. That was...horrible.
Sure, the new babe was better, but the way they solved these problems... They painted themselves into a corner and pulled the magic powers card to solve it. Not worthy of Star Trek.
To everyone badmouthing Voyager... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!-Free cooks. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but if you increase the number of cooks who can freely and independantly cook what they like, you increase your chances of at least one cook making something good to eat.
What I was thinking of was, supposedly Tarentino asked to direct the next James Bond movie, and was refused. Maybe it didn't happen, but regardless, it seems to me something might be gained by having works that have worked their way into the culture to become source for other's work. That's the point of having works become public domain in the first place.
So I wasn't referring to fans writing some little short story and posting it on the internet. I was talking about a real, good, professional director making the work new again by reinterpreting it in his own vision. After a certain term, having a mythological world (yes, Star Trek is mythological) controlled rigorously by a handful of people, used for their own gain- the mythological world is bound to become stagnant, it's occupants dull and two dimensional.
So, yeah, if some other director/screenwriter thinks he can do something interesting or come up with a new twist, I'd love to see it. Sometimes, I even think that, by integrating itself so thoroughly into pop-culture, making it impossible not to think about Star Trek when you think about certain types of scifi space adventures, and impossible to write a story about a slick secret-agent without comparing him to James Bond, maybe they've pushed themselves to the front of the line for things that ought to be public domain. In another way of saying it, maybe it's already entered the public domain, but the current law fails to appropriately determine it so.
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:yes (Score:3, Interesting)
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.
Hidden agenda: Bring religion to Star Trek, the series during Roddenberry's lifetime were notoriously as non-religious as he could get away with.
Also destroyed the idea of the future earth eutopia. Now its a creepy military police state with Starfleet no longer being a paramilitary space navy but the official ruling full-on military power of earth.
Standard Voyager episode
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.
Again, religion.
Also, did away with the prime directive. The ends justify the means and Janeway did anything and everything she could to get back to earth as fast as possible. Sometimes she had a conscience and would refrain from genocide, but not always.
Standard Enterprise episode:
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.
And to serve as a propaganda machine for the current U.S. administration.
With storylines ripped from last year's headlines! Terrorist strike the U.S., our brave military wiil go forth torturing and premptively conquering whomever stands in their way to protect the earth! YeeHAW!
Also bent on destroying the coolness of the Vulcans for some reson.
Re:Um... (Score:2, Interesting)
In the future, humanity has evolved to have an enormous respect for life, human(oid) or otherwise. You can't just vaporize your opponent. That's not nice. Sure, you *could* do it, but it's unethical. Just like the USA *could* nuke the middle east, but it's unethical.
Eventually, people will grow to understand that murder, for whatever reason (including self-defense), is wrong. Well, that is unless you plan to eat the deceased. Then, it's a food chain issue. Of course, the food chain in nonlinear in the future, due to the addition of millions of new species from other planets. I don't think there's any easy way to justify killing the pets of citizens of other planets, even if you plan to eat them (the pets, I mean), because there is no longer a "food chain" because of the light years of distance.
Humanity is not ready for technology, let alone transporters or fusion or warp drive. We need to learn how to live in peace without all the nationalism, racism, ethnic cleansing, and bigotry we see today. Yes, it's gotten better, but not by much. After all, why else would we have invented the Geneva Conventions?
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I loved TNG, most of it was really well done. But I got tired of the 'stateless' nature of the show. DS9 was cool once they got a real story going, but then at the end of the story they had to kill the show (well, it had been on the air long enough either way).
What I want now is a Trek show run kind of like a cross between the last few seasons of DS9 and The Outer Limits. Pick a story in the Trek universe. Any story, past, present or future, choose a story in the empires of humans, vulcans, klingons, whomever. Run it like a SciFi channel mini-series. Use as many or as few episodes as it takes to tell that story. Maybe its just one episode, or maybe it takes a dozen to do the story right. When the story is done, thats it, its over. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maintain an active online presence, and actually use fan suggestions. Pick up loose threads from other series, follow characters that showed up in other series. Sprinkle in episodes that tell the same story from the perspective of several different characters of different races.
The possibilities for such a show, particularly with writers that will pay attention to feedback from fans, are nearly endless, as is the potential for money-making spin-off series in the style of the older shows.
Roddenberry's daughter (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sisko wasn't overly violent. He's just not a poet wannabe (like Picard) and is a bit more like Kirk.
There were plenty more Kirk-like captains of european decent in TNG.
The bloke played by OCP's #2 (robocop) makes Sisko look positive tame.
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:3, Interesting)
The best thing about B5 is that it had a five year arc, written by someone who could really write, and with main characters who could act - and supporting characters who learned to act somewhere in the middle of the second season, except for the redheaded telepath chick. She looked cheesy all the way through, I hope that was bad direction or I can't see her getting too much work. Then again, considering what comes out of H'wood these days...
The problem with Trek is simply that it's a limited premise, even though it sounds unlimited. In the end, you just have aliens with different forehead makeup doing the same things over and over again. Yes, some of the new shows have come up with new ideas. Yes, there is probably some life left in Trek. However, the nature of television leads to the fact that we're going to get ten tons of schmaltz for every ounce of actual content.
My vote is for a show based loosely on Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books. Near-future, technology that's almost here now - I found those books to be immensely encouraging. If we really are going to go to Mars in any meaningful way we need something like that to get people interested so we can get it paid for.
What would a TOS 2005 look like? (Score:1, Interesting)
Protests. Threats of station boycotts. Continuous warfare between creative staff and the studio and network. Pushing the envelope socially and technically. Race, gender, sexuality. Showing technology no one else is even thinking about. It would have to piss people off (curiously, in the same parts of the US now as then:), and shudder under the special effects budget and plot restrictions required to make it look believable. Basically, it would have to be unlike any science fiction movie or series since.
Obviously, the probability of this ever coming out of a large studio is exactly zero.
People forget TOS was almost a half century ago. TOS was contemporary with the Civil Rights Act. Women professionals had all the universal respect that homosexual marriage does now. Lost in Space. Gidget. "Uhura" had trouble finding hotel rooms. Her uncorrupted mayor dad was almost executed by Capone during prohibition. She was spat on in an elevator for hanging with a white guy. Was raped by a rich white guy without fear of repercussion (ok, that one hasn't changed as much as the others). A black?!? And a woman!!?!! Professional??? This wasn't merely something which hadn't been done on TV. This was bizarre. Something to enrage and inspire viewers. Something one needed to fight the studio and network to include. TOS tried for a female first officer, but a woman in a command position was just too absurd for the studio/network to swallow. Who would believe it? The tech was beyond bizarre. A medical monitoring bed? You mean like a silver robot nurse with a stethoscope?
So, what would a new TOS look like? A TOS, to the contemporary Lost in Space of B5, Firefly, and Farscape.
Pervasive mechanical and computational support for all aspects of human motion, communication, and thought. Wandering hallways, chatting with people, over speaker phones, is soo not science fiction. More like late 20th century radio shack.
Everyone is multiracial. Great variety of sexual morays, homosexuality, complex dynamic polygamies, real sex (not cable channel cartoonish sex) on screen. Weird non-hierarchical decision making (computer augmented of course). Let's see, what other taboos could be bashed. Toilets. Intentional disregard of gender and age roles. Body modification. Diverse religions/philosophical systems, which make christian fundamentalism look like santa clause. All of it, however progressive, rational, humanist, or taboo, being considered by the participants as unexceptional.
So we are never going to see a new Trek like TOS. Nor a new series as innovative as TOS from a major studio. But maybe, some day, a couple of folks working on a shoestring will pull it off. It's not like the best of current sf is managing to keep up with this year's Interop, let alone what's in journals.
TOS was simply a qualitatively different acheivement than all the Drek which followed.