Shatner Leaks Trek XI Details

An anonymous reader writes "The rumors that the next Star Trek movie would revolve around the earliest missions of Kirk and Spock have been confirmed by William Shatner in a Sci Fi Wire interview. J.J. Abrahms (creator of 'Lost') will direct, and has confirmed that a draft script is completed. So, the question is, will Shatner appear as a reminiscing older Kirk in the beginning, setting up the rest of the movie as a flash-back, or will geriatric-Kirk and young-Kirk meet?"

I, for one, personaly, don't care.

[WarlockD]

Don't get me wrong, I MAY see it, but I have yet to even see the Nemesis and they want me to take a chance on 11? REALLY?

Don't get me wrong, I might see it. Like the crap that is Pirates of the Caribbean 2, I have to see the next one. One of these days I will see Nemesis. I am a fan of Trek so I am stuck with that.

The one slim hope is the guy (forgot his name) that has been running the series for the last 10 years is not going to be writing it.

Shatner as Boothby

[scdeimos]

I reckon he'll cameo as the aging groundskeeper at the academy, Boothby. Everyone knows Boothby's been there for centuries, and he'll probably catch the younger Kirk trying to carve his initials into his prized Elm tree.

But Kirk died in Generations!

[mark-t]

So how can Kirk be any older than he was in that movie?

Re:Against the spirit of Trek

[AKAImBatman]

If they had any balls at all they would have gone with the idea of having Captain Riker commanding the Titan in a time when the federation is being systematically destroyed in a major war (ie, the feds are losing). To see the federation being destroyed and fighting for it's life by spiting out warships would have been interesting to me.

It would have also permanently killed the series. The good Star Trek has always been a platform for commentary about everything from the human condition to modern politics. Since I sincerely doubt that anyone today can identify with a "major war" (which would be something along the lines of a WWII scenario IN SPACE!), the commentary aspect of Star Trek would be completely lost. In addition, it would further destroy Roddenberry's vision of a better tomorrow.

The end result is that you'd get Yet Another Action Show(TM) that's all fluff and no substance.

If you really want a good TV show about "major war", get the networks to reboot Space: Above and Beyond.

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

It went something like this:
 
...people saw Rocky? What? He's how old?

Let's make another Star Trek!

Odd/Even

[tao]

To me it sounds like they are trying to keep up the tradition of odd numbered ST-movie = bad, even numbered ST-movie = good...

Re:Against the spirit of Trek

[AKAImBatman]

One could have the Borg as a metaphor for a modern United States.

See, I always saw the Klingons as metaphors for the Russian/Communist threat, the Romulans as a metaphor for espionage, and the Borg as a metaphor for socialism.

Each fits surprisingly well. In the original series, the Klingons were the major threat, but were held at bay by tenuous treaties like the Organian Peace Treaty. When NextGen came along, it reflected how Russia was no longer a threat to world peace and even suggested cooporation between the peoples. Which was rather earth shattering at a time when Russians were mostly portrayed in movies as arrogant and ultra-competitive. Yet today, it's kind of hard to think of that "mean Russian" image that was so popular during the 80's.

The Romulans go on to show how powerful yet ugly the very idea of espionage is. In the original series, it was portrayed as a battle of wits with the loser losing something very precious indeed. (Be it their new Plasma weapon or the Cloaking Generator.) NextGen expanded on this by adding the Tal'Shiar (sp?) element to the Romulans, making them even sneakier and uglier to work with. It also added the dimension of the "normal" people getting caught up in the problems created by espionage.

The Borg were very simply an overpowering force that sought to equalize and harmonize the universe at the expense of individuality and free expression. I 5hink that describes socialism pretty well, don't you? ;)

Oh, and the Borg are not cyborgs. They are merely "organically challenged". :P

Re:I, for one, personaly, don't care.

[BobSutan]

The producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga were tossed off of Trek pretty much indefinitely for how they mishandled Enterprise and the last film. That said, I still don't think this movie is a good move. I think they should let the material rest for a while until the fans actually want more Start Trek. At this point people would rather go without it than see it butchered like it has been over the course of the last decade.

Re:My concept for a new Trek series or film.

[Incidence]

"3. They have "abandoned money"? Wait a minute... money is nessicary when there is scarcity and a market economy... and they definitly didn't eliminate scarcity (after all, dilithium crystals are still rare and valuable... there is only one holideck on the Enterprise, not one for every crew memeber, definitly meaning it would require some sort of rationing... the Enterprise is always carrying medicine or supplies, implying that the replicators can only produce certain types of objects)."

In Deep Space 9 its pretty clear that money still exists and that Starfleet pays its people some how because there are shops and you see Starfleet crew shopping in them. Also in Voyager there is a show were two of the main characters are talking about a historical renactment bar were people go around and pretend to steal people's wallets to increase accuracy. Personally I think the "no money" thing was quietly dropped after the creaters realised it caused problems like you mentioned.

4. We are left to assume that the Federation is some sort of Democracy... then why don't starfleet officers ever talk politics? Why isn't Data a member of one political party, while Wharf is a memeber of another political party, and they have heated (though respectful) political discussions? Why isn't Pickard contiplating his civilian political career after his starfleet career? Why is there never any controversy about Federation policy?

The Federation is a Democracy or a Republic of some sort because we met the President of the Federation (he is an alien by the way) in a 2-parter in DS9. There is also a split between the Federation and Starfleet because in the same 2-parter Starfleet has to get permission to overhaul base security and it was the President who had to declare martial law. I know you ment the post to be funny but I wanted to point out that some of your points were talked about in the later shows and dealt with to some degree.

Re:My concept for a new Trek series or film.

[DoktorTomoe]

the Enterprise is always carrying medicine or supplies, implying that the replicators can only produce certain types of objects

... or they plan for a worst-case scenario: Need for medication when the replicator has ceased working (as in: massive energy loss, massive damage, stranded in a defective shuttlecraft on some remote moon...)

Makes sense to me.

Re:But Kirk died in Generations!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another problem: AFAIK Kirk and Spock first met just before the beginning of the original series. Spock was already a science officer at the Enterprise under Captain Pike, and Kirk took over after the loss of Pike. All this is shown in the TOS episode that was created from parts of the original pilot (where Shatner was not yet in), and it should definitely be canon.

Re:Against the spirit of Trek

[istewart]

Deep Space Nine is widely considered the best Trek series, and its last four seasons centered around an ongoing story about a major war that the Federation stood a major chance of losing. One could perhaps argue that it wasn't as big a success as TNG or TOS, but all the data I've ever seen indicated that it did as well as TNG in first-run syndication. (Then Spike ran it into the ground after it was removed from syndicated reruns, but such is the nature of the modern TV market.)

And it set the stage for even more interesting story possibilities, although they haven't been explored. As far as we've seen, Starfleet has always been balanced between its military aspect and peaceful exploration. Right up till STVI, the balance was almost dead even: there was a state of cold war with the Klingons, but you also had Kirk and his contemporaries doing their 5-year missions of exploration. During TNG, one can argue that the balance had swung heavily towards the explorers (although there is that Cardassian war immediately pre-TNG that we didn't get to see). DS9 chronicled a sudden and severe shift toward militarism. The warships that the grandparent poster wanted to see being spit out have already been spat out. The Defiant was mass-produced, even though its sole purpose is as an overpowered gunship. TNG told us that the initial run of Galaxy-class ships was limited to 9, and DS9 shows us a whole lot more than that, all of them heavily armed and doubtless assembled on an accelerated total-war production regimen.

So even though the Federation won, how does it go back to the fleet full of peaceful explorers we saw during TNG? There's the essential conflict that sets up the premise of such a story. Add to that the fact that there's a gigantic power vacuum in Romulan space since Picard's vinyl-fetishist clone murdered the Senate, and throw in a few TOS-style devious-bastard Klingons who don't like Martok because he's too buddy-buddy with the Federation, oh, and those Section 31 guys too, and we have a recipe for a very interesting story that is equal parts action and commentary on human nature.

So an entertaining and thoughtful follow-on to TNG-era Trek is certainly possible (although maybe not in the exact fashion the GPP was thinking about), and it could be a solid draw for both nerds and casual fans alike with happy memories of TNG and DS9. But such ideas aren't under consideration because executives would rather find a gimmick that they think would bring in a lot of people all at once. Case in point, a prequel movie which recasts the two most recognized Trek characters out there (and make no mistake, there will be an infinite amount of nerd rage on this point), or the proposed Web-based miniseries which completely overthrows the Trek universe to give us "Star Trek as YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!"

Captain Cook

[Mutatis Mutandis]

The original Star Trek centered on a ship and a crew on a mission of exploration in uncharted space. James Kirk was an extrapolation of James Cook, on a five-your voyage through space instead of a three-year voyage over the seas. Cook once wrote that he wanted to go "farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go" and Star Trek's mission statement echoed this.

Like Cook's, Kirk's was a combined military and scientific expedition. Of course what was "out there" turned out to be very much our own problems in another disguise, but that was the core of the genre. The concept, of course, was also an echo of the era in which the series was made, when science and exploration were sources of optimism and space seemed to be a final frontier that was going to be taken on the hop.

Later series diverted from the concept, reflecting changing priorities of societies and growing pessimism about the future. The Next Generation was on a mission to spread political correctness through space, to baldly go where no bald one has gone before, at least not without a toupee. Attempts to satisfy everyone on everything, another unfortunate characteristic of the 90s, included such silliness as a battleship on a mission of peace, a flagship without an admiral, an expedition vessel with children on board, and a shrink on the bridge to make statements of the obvious.

The best hope is for Star Trek to go back to its roots. To send young captain (lieutenant commander?) Kirk on a mission of exploration on a small vessel with a dedicated crew, perhaps on a surveying mission to map space. (Cook's career also started as a surveyor of the coast of Newfoundland.) And then let him deal with some problem of reasonable dimensions -- there is no reason to save the planet again. If he can save his ship and crew that is enough.

Re:Against the spirit of Trek

[bigbigbison]

I've said it before, but the fact that they have 3 series set in the same time period (TNG, DS9, and Voyager) means that they have a lot of characters and storylines they could pick up on. I think there could be a lot of mileage out of mashing together the characters from those series. They are established characters but with only a couple minor crossovers we haven't seen them interact.

Rather than make up some stupid new enemy like in Generations or Insurrection or reveal that there's a whole other species that we've never heard of before living on the homeworld of one of the primary Trek adversaries like in Nemesis why not logically build on the situations that were created in the series?

my 5 centses

[slfnflctd]

1) Gene deserves more respect than he's gotten lately from the people who carry on his work.

2) TNG, DS9 & Voyager may've had their flaws, but they all had long runs and significant numbers of loyal fans, and should not be ignored.

3) Battlestar Galactica & Firefly should indeed be required watching for anyone involved in the production of any serious sci-fi from here on out.

4) The canon should be shored up (and better treated)-- as one example, I think it's imperative to be in harmony with the design style of TOS when capturing any 'new footage' of that era (or before). It should be possible to do this while still having freedom to add new embellishments, and a few subtle alterations could soften the cheesiness considerably while maintaining the core elements which visually define that time period.

5) Finally, any reasonably intelligent writing/designing/directing team with half a heart between them ought to be able to produce something decent with just a quick-yet-comprehensive review of the past work, providing they simply listen to fan feedback along the way. Based on that belief, I won't judge any film that hasn't even been filmed yet - including the above one - based on a blurb.

So, here's to hoping for the best and preparing for the worst, as usual...