Could Fuller Take Trek Back To TV? 444
bowman9991 writes "Bryan Fuller, creator of the TV show Pushing Daisies and a former Star Trek writer and producer, is geared up to make it happen. The new Star Trek TV show would be based on "old style" Star Trek, rather than the more recent incarnations and variations: Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise and Star Trek: The Next Generation. There hasn't been a Star Trek TV series since Enterprise was canceled after four seasons in 2005. Fuller wrote twenty one Star Trek episodes over four years, two in Deep Space Nine's final season, and the rest for Voyager. He also produced Voyager's last season. If J.J. Abrams' reboot is successful (and the latest trailer suggests it will be!) perhaps we'll see him involved with a new Star Trek TV show with the style and impact of Fringe or Lost. The new Star Trek movie featuring a young Kirk and Spock is in cinemas May 2009." Besides his work on many episodes of Trek, Fuller's work includes Dead Like Me and some of the best of Heroes. (He's one of the names I actively seek in the writing slot.) Between him and JJ Abrams, the era of Rick Berman looks to finally be at an end. Cross your fingers.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than another series that will result in overpriced DVDs, I'd have loved to get a DS9 or Voyager Movie or two...
Hmmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
And Voyager was such a great series. Sarcasm intended.
pushing daisies (Score:3, Interesting)
pushing daisies was amazing and it wasn't until the show was canceled and i started looking around that i even realized who fuller was, but have since recognized that I have long enjoyed his work without knowing who he was.
Now I know who to credit for all the entertainment that I really liked (Voyager, Season 1 heroes, Pushing daisies...)
It's a shame that pushing daisies didn't make it. I think the show was a huge victim of the writer's strike. The shortened first season killed the audience and it never recovered. it's been very disappointing for my wife and I because the shows we can watch and enjoy together are few and far between, and this was one we both really liked.
We also both really liked Heroes Season 1, but Season 2 was a complete disaster and neither of us watch it any more. It's weird how it all seems to be about fuller's presence or absence (in hindsight).
They hired Fuller for writing on Heroes again, but I think it's too late. They should just kill the show.
Oh well.
"It wasn't too bad." :) (Score:3, Interesting)
And that is the problem. Look at how bad it really was. Not in comparison to even worse shows. But in comparison to GOOD shows.
They had set up a really interesting concept ... and then totally neutered it. Everyone on the ship were best friends. Even though a large chunk of the crew had declared their own war. And the ship somehow kept getting repaired. And the borg were suddenly very weak. And do we really want to go into time travel?
Now compare that to Firefly's only season. Some of the crew did not like other members of the crew. The captain was not perfect. They had to work to keep the ship flying.
Re:Star Trek is in "The Future" (Score:5, Interesting)
Federation Civil War?
Fall of the Federation?
Andromeda was, apparently, originally meant to be the sequel to ST:TNG. The Federation would be betrayed by one of its allies and collapse into a civil war and the story would follow an attempt to rebuild it.
The folks at Paramount didn't want it. They felt it would be too dark for Star Trek and not have the hopeful feel that the rest of the series had.
Re:All I know (Score:4, Interesting)
Rick Berman is the reason Star Trek became Star Twrecked. Let's get positions casted, put putty on someone's nose, rinse and repeat.
TNG and DS9 didn't have a token vulcan so Voyager got a black vulcan and Enterprise had a female vulcan. The guy doesn't know how to put a character together.
All his movies with the exception of First Contact sucked and got progressively worse.
Part of the charm of TOS was the banter of Kirk, McCoy and Spock. It was 3 guys diametrically opposed at work in different situations. That was the formula that none of the other series had. Enterprise was the closest but didn't know what it had and failed to deliver.
I saw Janeway (Score:2, Interesting)
Rather, Kate Mulgrew entering a restaurant near Times Square a couple of months back.
I heard the voice then I did a double take, and sure enough it was her.
She looked old.
I was tempted to go in and say hi, but I'm not that much of a geek.
Re:Let the grim reaper do his job (Score:3, Interesting)
I vote for Kirk and Spock (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly the whole charm of the TOS was that it wasn't -that- far into the future, and the basic characters just worked.
By creating Kirk and Spock and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise, Roddenberry gave us the modern equivalent of a Hercules myth. We can milk Kirk and Spock for two thousands years, and, if we are as good as the Greeks, we should.
And frankly, I'm sick of all the darkness in present science fiction. Science is advancing more all the time and if there was ever a time for optimism based on a scientific society, NOW is it. Humanity can improve, and will improve, and having a series that reminds us of what our future could be, if we chose to do it, and reminds us of our ongoing moral obligations, is a damned fine thing.
Sick of all these moral halfwits running around in sci-fi these days. Poor Adam's crying again on Galactica. Big woosy. Poor Col Tigh's drinking again, and he's a fricking Cylon. That show had all sorts of promise and then they made Adam cry all the time and Tigh into a Cylon. What the frak is that. I'm sick of complexity in characters. I want -Gods-.
What about a show about Starfleet Academy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's always interesting to see the varied opinions within Trek fandom. I, for one, thought Enterprise was an excellent show, although the story arc involving the Xindi and the Expanse took waaaaaay too long. I hated Voyager, almost as much as I hated DS9. Never cared for Janeway either.
In order, I'd have to say my favorite treks were:
1.) TNG
2.) Enterprise
3.) TOS
Then, off in the far distance:
4.) Voyager
5.) DS9
Re:What about a show about Starfleet Academy? (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean seriously, we have enough shows dramatizing the trials and tribbleations of kids in school.
Re:Star Trek is in "The Future" (Score:2, Interesting)
I had no interest in going backward, I never watched Enterprise until it was already canceled. I got hooked on it, but it wasn't really Star Trek to me.
The only REAL way to make progress in Star Trek is to keep the imagination flowing, inspired by recent advances in science while making an effort to explain away the holes in the story and the stuff that looks stupid in retrospect from the previous series.
Anything else is just mental masturbation for all those Treky bastards who make the rest of us look like dorks for liking the TV show.
Re:I loved Pushing Daises but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I loved Pushing Daises but it failed fair and square.
I think some of these "high concept" shows are only really good for a dozen or so episodes. Unfortunately, the US system expects everything to run for 7-8 years or be deemed a failure. If PD had been made in the UK they'd have done two runs of 6-12 episodes, finished the story and gone out while they were ahead (c.f. Life on Mars UK vs. Life on Mars USA).
Heroes is another case in point: Season 1 found a fresh new way to do a superhero origin story. Shiny*. Unfortunately, once that was finished, well, either take up the spandex or go back to your families and quit whining, guys.
(also c.f. the 6 episodes in each season of BSG which are really, really good or how much better B5 got when they crammed two seasons of plot arc into one...)
Now Trek doesn't have to be high concept if they go back to the basic TOS/TNG formula: not stuck in the delta quadrant; not stuck on a space station in the vanguard of a galactic war; not a pawn in the great time ware. Nope, just a starship crew on a continuing mission to explore strange new worlds and go where no man/person/reptile/walking tree-oid has gone before. Think of a story, any story, they can stumble into it.
If they want high concept, do a movie or mini series.
* Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, everybody on the CColonBackSlash blog is probably whining about how rubbish Season 8 of Firefly is turning out to be, and asking why the hell they cancelled the Simpsons in 1995.
Yes more like TOS - W/ Kirk putting his boots ALOT (Score:3, Interesting)
I liked the TOS, because there was much more of an unknown quality to the enemies - Spock was distrusted by many crew members, WTF were Romulans? - oh SH*T they look like Spock.
I much prefer the renegrade style, wild west Kirk, than Tea and Crumpets Pickard (although he is damn good)
Yes - weekly defeats with the Federation in jeopardy would be quite tense and exciting to watch.
Re:Hmmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
By the way, if you win a Trek argument on slashdot, you automatically get laid tonight. I promise.
Re:Yes more like TOS - W/ Kirk putting his boots A (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes - weekly defeats with the Federation in jeopardy....
Was a regular thing during the last few seasons of DS9.
Re:What about a show about Starfleet Academy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:more ToS would be a step backwards (Score:3, Interesting)
The original series was fantastically uneven. At the high end it was unmatched by anything that followed with episodes like Amok Time, City on the Edge of Forever, Devil in the Dark etc. At the low end, well it made me want to hurl chunks.
A common thread between many of these great episodes was great writing be authors like Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon. Bring in some good writers from Sci Fi and you will have great episodes again.
TNG was more even but never reached the heights of the great ToS episodes. Brent Spiner though was terrific.
Enterprise was mostly crap, but the 4th season where they reverted back to the old ToS/TNG formula it was pretty good. Of course by then everyone had given up on the series so it was too late.
Re:Star Trek/Lost Mix (Score:2, Interesting)
Dude, Janeway was hot. I don't hide it; I have a thing for slighter older women with authority.
I don't think I'm the only one, either. :)
Re:I vote for Kirk and Spock (Score:2, Interesting)
And frankly, I'm sick of all the darkness in present science fiction. Science is advancing more all the time and if there was ever a time for optimism based on a scientific society, NOW is it.
Well said. This was one of Gene's original themes in TOS. He created it with the idea that maybe, just maybe, we as a species were going to make it. Star Trek was always at it's best when it had a message (which Voyager tried to rehash but just came off as preachy).
Re:Hmmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you watch DS9 after the war started and they started to let Ron Moore do his thing? Watching the creature-comfort Federation come to the brink of collapse was much more interesting than watching Picard show up at a planet and lecture the locals about their backward traditions.
Ah, but the real fun was when he'd lecture his own crew about respecting those backward traditions...
Also, there are four lights.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
The two best ideas I've heard for a ST series are one about Section 31 (similar to stuff like Alias, but in Star Trek) and one about the 29th century with the timeships and all that.
A series about Section 31 could be pretty awesome if it was done right but anything involving time travel is a recipe for disaster and reset-button plots. Section 31 though -- think of some of the stories you could write with that. Maybe the Federation has it's own torture scandals? Maybe what they did to the Founders comes out at some point? Think of intrigue with the Tal Shiar [memory-alpha.org].
Re:Star Trek is in "The Future" (Score:3, Interesting)
Star Trek was always a fantasy to me as an engineer about what 'could be'.
Much of the fantasy gizmos that could only live in science fiction are common today. When TOS was on TV in the 60s, there were no cell phones (communicators), no self-opening doors, no flat screen voice activated computers, and if I sat here and thought about it for a while I could probably come up with a lot more.
Real technology in some cases has surpassed TOS. In Star Trek II, Bones gives Kirk reading glasses for his age-related presbyopia because Kirk was allergic to "Retinox" (presumably a drug that softens the eye's lens so geezers can focus), but in 2003 the FDA approved the implant in my left eye which cured my extreme myopia (nearsightedness), age related presbyopia (farsightedness), and the cataract that had formed. If I'd been astigmatic the implant would have cured that as well, too.
I've been amazed at the scientific and technological advances in my lifetime. McCoy would be in awe if he could see a 21st century operating room!
Don't fill it with too much technobabble
The technobabble has always irked me, and it got worse with TNG. Why say "blind as an antarian bat?" That's just dumb IMO, "blind as a bat" suffices. I parodied 1960s sci-fi a few years ago with Saturday, written as Science Fiction from the early 1960s [kuro5hin.org]
Re:How do you reinvent Trek? (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd have to change the animal so much that it wouldn't seem recognizable. The old formula has become such a cliche that there's absolutely nothing you can reuse from it. Reset button at the end of the episode, lame. Space anomalies, lame. Gritty scifi future with lots of angst, made lame by overexposure on Galactica. Aliens who look exactly like us save for bumpy foreheads? I could buy it when I was younger but it's just ridiculous these days. (I'll probably be in the minority on this one.) Time-travel plots, squishy techno-babble science plots, holodeck plots, everything that makes Trek Trek is what's been killing it. It's like asking "Can we make a healthy Big Mac?" Yeah, and by the time you're done removing everything that's bad about that burger, you're left with nothing but lettuce and sesame seeds.
As a fan, what I'd like to see is the Star Trek experience from another point of view. Don't keep giving us the "good guys", the Federation, with their Prime Directive.
Give us a series based on, say, the Klingons (TNG era .. please skip the whole "TOS to TNG" evolution thing - TOS Klingons looked that way because of budget, that's it.) A story similar to Star Trek: Klingon [memory-alpha.org] would make a great pilot for a Klingon-based series - a young Klingon goes through the Rite of Ascension to become a true Warrior, joins a ship. Let the series experience the Star Trek universe through the lens of a young Klingon - not some goody Federation captain, which we've now seen more times than we need.
As he experiences the universe as a Klingon warrior, so do we. Let a mentor show him the true path of a Klingon warrior. Show the audience the code of honor from the Klingons. Throw in some Klingon language (swearing in Klingon!)
In this series, there's no Prime Directive. Very little diplomacy, no helping other cultures to better themselves. And it should go without saying: no journey of self-discovery, except for the central character as he learns what it means to be a true Klingon warrior.
Hey, I'd watch that every week!
Re:Lost interest (Score:4, Interesting)
And there is definitely a happy medium to be found between "cliffhanger at the end of every episode" and "everything tied up with a neat little bow." To leave sci-fi, Scrubs strikes this balance very nicely. There are a lot of multi-episode arcs (often found in the subplots), and continuity in general is something that happens consistently rather than once a season, but the actual main plot line of each episode is almost always resolved at the end. You get actual character development over time, unlike many traditional sitcoms, but you can also watch a single episode and be satisfied at the end.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
No other Trek has been as dark and gritty as DS9 was, actually showing a real, unsanitized war with it's attendant ugliness, while portraying a federation that was, for a change, flawed and multifaceted.
Strange ... you say that like it was a good thing. Some of us actually watched Trek *because* it was a vision of a cleaner, sanitized world, a better humanity where the ideals we strive for are seen in action actually solving problems. The darker, more flawed vision of the Trek universe in DS9, where the ends justify the means and everyone's a broken hypocrite underneath, undermined what seemed to me to be the whole point of the Trek universe.
Also, the Dominion War had a tendency to have ships blowing up all over the place as eye candy, destroying the sense that each ship mattered, that each ship represented a huge investment of resources, a rich and meaningful history and a crew with stories of their own. In attempting to be a bigger, louder Babylon 5 (all while struggling to find a message beyond "life sucks" after it's writers failed to make the initial high-concept post-insurgency-peace theme compelling), DS9 ceased to be recognizable as Trek to me.
Oh dear, I've become a person who argues Trek.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, if by "truly great" you mean bailed out with a plot device (wormhole aliens) and don't stop to question why Captain Sisko seemed to be single-handily running the Federation's war-effort, ranging from commanding a fleet of some 600 ships on his own to commanding a ground battle that could have been ended in two minutes if any of the Trek powers had the equivalent of machine guns or artillery. Are there really no infantry weapons bigger than rifles in the 24th century?
Meh, I never said the show was flawless. But it was, in those seasons, as good as the best TNG, IMHO, and far better than anything Voyager or Enterprise have ever offered.
I agree, the wormhole aliens solution was a bit contrived (although, it makes sense in the context of the show... the aliens are supposedly a) all-powerful, and b) the custodians of Bajor... going to them for help isn't unreasonable). Then again, was Data's solution to the Borg problem in "Best of Both Worlds" any less contrived? And as for Sisko's role, well... you could just as easily level the same criticism against Picard in TNG leading the charge in any number of engagements.
Garek had the best character in the series (IMHO) and Eddington's critique of the Federation particularly damning:
I couldn't agree more. I also think the episode in which there was an attempted military coup on Earth was brilliantly executed.
It's funny, though. You say that "portraying a federation that was, for a change, flawed and multifaceted" "was actually one of the redeeming things about it." To me, that's what makes the series brilliant.
I mean, the goal of science fiction shouldn't be to present funny aliens, or to give nerds neat technology to drool over. It should be to use the setting as an environment in which one can then explore the human condition in a way that would otherwise be impossible. DS9 attempted to do that, exploring the decisions and compromises one must make during a time of war, and it did so better than, I think, any other other Trek, save for TNG.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
First Contact coulda' been really good, if they'd played up the distrust/hatred between Sisko and Picard. With everyone not trusting Picard and Sisko hating him but being thrown together, having to work together to defeat the Borg, coulda' been a cool character driven movie.
Instead, they went with standard Star Trek plotting and cardboard characters.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
I gave it half a season before deciding it was too freaking lame to continue.
So I take it you never watched TNG, either? Or have you conveniently forgotten the horror show that was the majority of season one?
Re:How do you reinvent Trek? (Score:2, Interesting)
Jollyreaper's posting is right on target.
As soon as writers get a hold of a holodeck, an all-powerful being (Q), or time travel, you can kiss the show goodbye. It's like comedians making jokes about sex: Sure, sex jokes can be good, but all too often they just mean the comedian is running short on material, and because sex is an easy giggle, they seize on it. It becomes like a comedian's deus ex machina. With a holodeck or all-powerful being you get the same thing - almost a literal deus ex machina. And with time travel, that machine quickly reveals the writer's scientific and creative limitations, as he or she either ignores obvious paradoxes, or lamely explains them away.
I sometimes wonder whether the reason why most SciFi series's all seem to go this sorry route is that the Writer's Guild limits, consciously, the show's ability to draw in fresh ideas. SciFi and Fantasy writing is hard, and takes imagination. And you can't just stick a bunch of writers in a room and expect them (without serious prodding and mining the outside world for new ideas) to avoid burbling on about sex, holodecks, time travel, space anomalies, and all the clichés they've come to be known for.
I'm still wondering, though, when we can have space ships that don't bank and turn (like a plane in the atmosphere) or make 'noise' when they explode in the emptiness of space, and when we have a bridge with a window to the outside world that doesn't look like my neighbor's HD TV - but rather fills most or all of the room, and doesn't just point 'forward' (with other ships always approaching with an identical orientation). I understand that one has to make concessions to the realities of earth-bound production (e.g., everyone has to speak the same language, they need mostly to be humanoid, corridors on ships need to be big enough to accommodate cameras, etc.). But that shouldn't mean that all plots must be constructed around a bunch of hackneyed conventions.
If SciFi is going to draw in new people, it really needs to go where no one has gone before, kinda like Firefly started to do (see the thread on Fox SciFi, though, for why that didn't happen).
Of course, part of me knows, deep down, that the reason SciFi is often so stupid is that we ourselves are stupid. Or at least I am. I watch this stuff, after all.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
It got to me to thinking. What is the Federation really? At least as written by Gene Roddenberry it seems to border on communism. Even DS9 continued this trend to a certain point -- mentioning "transporter credits" in one episode. Apparently the government doles out ration coupons to control how often the citizenry can move about. Where's the individual freedom and liberty?
That's one of the bigger things that bugs me about Star Trek. Starfleet guys get all kinds of cool toys and get to go places and blow shit up... but the majority of the population is held down on the planet, and kept fat/dumb/happy by the "ever-good" Federation government. Apparently, resources are unlimited, so there's no money or poverty. So what do those people do all day?
I mean, compare that with Star Wars, where even some teenaged kid who sucks water from the air miles from civilization on an armpit of a planet somewhere between No and Where owns a vehicle capable of suborbital flight and two autonomous self-repairing AIs. I think I'll take the latter scenario, warts and all.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
It got to me to thinking. What is the Federation really?
One thing that no Star Trek series has gotten much into is the interaction between military and civilian life. It's really strange if you think much about it. You have this huge fascist/communist state with a seemingly pervasive military presence. They have tons of military vessels just patrolling around the galaxy in seemingly random ways, under the excuse of scientific research and exploration, but constantly poking their noses in everyone's business. They're using their military might to cause outcomes favorable to themselves on a regular basis.
And then when you see civilian life, everyone seems to just be hanging around in restaurants and bars or running vineyards. It's a very pastoral but irrelevant civilian life.
And for some reason, no one is disturbed by it.
Re:Hmmmm. (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed. The Ron Moore-run version of DS9 after the war broke out was by far some of the best Trek ever to hit the small screen. Very entertaining stuff and it always kept you guessing. I guess if you were a dyed-in-the-wool Gene Roddenberry fan, though, you probably wouldn't have liked it because it was also the least Roddenberry-esque Trek to ever hit the small screen.
Reasons for optimism (Score:3, Interesting)
Your criticisms are interesting but like so many people, you lack perspective.
The fact is, right now more people are wealthier than they ever have been. Many of our problems today, are problems of wealth. That is a good problem to have. Bad problems to have are rampant starvation. We're WELL on the way to making all of humanity less hungry than ever. China is lifted out of poverty, India is on its way out. Dude, that's 2 billion people that can eat, that couldn't. That have money, but didn't.
Our lifetime is a TRIUMPH of progress. Even this present recession is a minor calamity compared to what other people have gone through in the past.
We take it for granted any more that when we choose to have a child, that the child will live. This was not possible even 50 years ago.
We take it for granted that when we turn on the tap water, it will be safe. By and large it is safer water than it has ever been. 100 years ago, we had the likes of cholera to worry about. Today, it doesn't happen, and neither do many other diseases born of bad water.
We have more food than ever, of every kind, and if you want all natural food, you can get that too.
Landfills might be choked with trash, but landfills are only a tiny portion of the overall earth. In the northeastern United States, a great reforestation has taken place and within our lifetimes. And there are more birds than ever before. Just look up... there used to be few birds, and now there are great and enormous flocks of them migrating. I didn't see -that- when I was a kid.
Cars are definitely better than they have been. Today's econobox weighs less, goes farther, handles better on a tank of gas. You might rip computers, but where once people bought manufactured goods subject to the tolerances of the human eye and hand, now they get consistent and reliable products made perfectly by a machine. This allows consumers to have goods of a greater complexity than ever before.
I'm routinely critical of science because in the short term, it is politicized, and over-promises. But the thing is, all of those incremental advances do pile up in a way that works out good for humans. We may find, as we advance more problems to solve, but, there's no denying that that past we leave behind, at least in terms of technology and lifespan and the human condition, is nowhere near as bright as the future that lies ahead.
Either the USA or the Chinese are going back to th e moon. It looks Mars will finally survive a Democratic administration. We have better unmanned space probes heading out to newer places than ever before. I would have NEVER thought that we would see pictures of Pluto's surface in our lifetime and we're going to get that. We are getting counts and pixel sized images of planets in other solar systems.
And plus, hell, Microsoft is shipping a version of Windows that actually works, Linux can finally recognize my mouse in X without screwing everything up, and Intel CPUs can add.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why Cavil in Battlestar is so great. He's like the anti-Data.
"I DON'T WANT TO BE HUMAN!!!"
Starships are done, done, done. (Score:3, Interesting)