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Sci-Fi Media Television

New Animated Star Trek In The Works 343

Posted by Zonk from the sounds-fine-by-me dept.
Philias writes "A new web-based Star Trek Animated Series may be in the works. CBS is considering a pitch by veteran Trek producer Dave Rossi for a 'Clone Wars' style animated series for StarTrek.com. Like Clone Wars the episodes would be just a few minutes long. Unlike the old animated Trek show from the 70s, this one would be with a whole new crew set in a new time period. The setting is to be a war-torn post-9/11-like Trek universe 150 years after the time of Picard." From the post: "The Zero Room team felt that the time was right for a new approach to Trek. The setting is the year 2528 and the Federation is a different place after suffering through a devastating war with the Romulans 60 years earlier. The war was sparked off after a surprise attack of dozens of 'Omega particle' detonations throughout the Federation creating vast areas which become impassible to warp travel and essentially cut off almost half the Federation from the rest. During the war the Klingon homeworld was occupied by the Romulans, all of Andoria was destroyed and the Vulcans, who were negotiating reunification with the Romulans, pulled out of the Federation. The setting may seem bleak and not very Trek-like, but that is where the show's hero Captain Alexander Chase comes in."
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New Animated Star Trek In The Works More

New Animated Star Trek In The Works

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  • Dumbest Star Trek captain name, ever.

  • And the first time travel episode will be... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tebriel ( 192168 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @02:18PM (#17241916)
    Can we start a pool on when the first time travel episode will be? I'm betting 5th show of the first season.

    • Re:And the first time travel episode will be... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @02:22PM (#17242016) Homepage Journal
      After the episode airs, I'll come back and replace this post with one that wins the pool.
      • Ya, the only real question is whether or not it'll be before the Klingon/Romnulan/Borg namedropping episode.

        150 years, sounds about right for the Enterprise J. Wait, J? James, Janeway, benJamin, Jean-Luc. OH my god, this could be the greatest Trek story ever!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Wellington Grey ( 942717 )
      Can we start a pool on when the first time travel episode will be?


      It already happened six episodes ago.

      -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

    • Re:And the first time travel episode will be... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stfvon007 ( 632997 ) <enigmar007.yahoo@com> on Thursday December 14, 2006 @02:30PM (#17242160) Journal
      Pilot episode, in the first few minutes. The captain and starship will be from the past and get stuck near a black hole. After escaping the black hole, they find it is the future, and the happy life they had and their precious federation is now gone and has become a rough and tumble place with enemies everywhere....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jerf ( 17166 )
      I fully expect Captain Alexander Chase's ship to be a time ship. It will start with some sort of limitations that seemingly prevents it from being used to solve all problems, but the limititations will be routine flouted by the other writers once the series gets going.

      Seriously, I'd like to see a reboot of Star Trek where they declare in one form or another that there is no longer any such thing as time travel, and while I won't ask them to completely discard the idea of multiple universes or "dimensions",

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Infonaut ( 96956 )

      Crap! You beat me to it!

      I think it says something about what Trek has become that so many people immediately think of reliance on the tired plot device of time travel when they think of the franchise.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      If the old Berman crew were still in charge, it'd be the first episode: time travel is the standard dodge of unimaginative SF writers. (There have have been some great TT stories, some even on Star Trek, but the sub-genre is thoroughly mined out. It's only current virtue is that it's paradoxical, so the writer doesn't have to come up with a consistent plot.) But if they've abandoned the warm-and-fuzzy Federation that has been the backdrop of Star Trek since the 60s, then hopefully they're abandoning the ti
    • Right after the episode where they all get sick and start giggling and shagging.

  • Super Nerds! (Score:2, Funny)

    by frieza79 ( 947618 )
    Cartoons + Star Trek? Man, this is going to be the nerdiest show ever.
  • I would personally rather see something between the first faster than light voyage and NCC-1701. Eric
  • ..... there's a very shapely and sexy female character in tight clothes that makes a nerd like me drool, then I'll watch.


  • Star Trek became closer to Star Wars as time went along. And a new series based after a war? No shit....You'd think they would actually sit down and try to come up with a thought provoking story at some point.

    • They got it, but they don't know how to handle it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Thursday December 14, 2006 @02:40PM (#17242358)
      From TFA:
      Rounding out the 'big 3 will be Lt. Kaylen Donal, a tough-as-nails security chief whose team of red shirts are all linked with Borg technology implants called 'Biomechanical Utility Grafts or 'BUGs'. The Zero Room team want to see this security squad kick some butt and not just be cannon fodder.

      What the fuck? They have an entire section going trans-human with Borg technology ... VOLUNTARILY any they still miss the implications?

      Instead ...
      "Although the show is set in the future the designs are founded in TOS, it is a throwback that is also looking forward," explains Rossi.

      That makes no sense what-so-ever.

      And ...
      "The Captain is more forward thinking and wants to go out and do some exploring but half the crew will be against that and want to just protect the border," says Rossi.

      Captain's Log, Stardate 2528 point 4. I have beamed half the crew into space during a mutiny. They had forgotten that this was a Star Fleet vessel and not a Democracy. I will ... miss them.

      • Rounding out the 'big 3 will be Lt. Kaylen Donal, a tough-as-nails security chief whose team of red shirts are all linked with Borg technology implants called 'Biomechanical Utility Grafts or 'BUGs'. The Zero Room team want to see this security squad kick some butt and not just be cannon fodder.

        That sounds a LOT like the failed Stargate: Infinity cartoon series. Because, you know, if it's a cartoon they MUST have neato gadgets and vehicles* that don't do anything while they pound another nonsensical "life's

    • mod parent up as insightful! That was the first thing I thought of - "not another war episode/series/movie". What happened to exploring strange new worlds? Can anyone even remember when that was what Star Trek was about?
  • Judging from the animation style, it looks like they're trying to do to Star Trek, what Loonatics Unleashed [slashdot.org] "re-imagining" was to the Warner Brothers cartoons.

    It's crap, Alex, but not as we know it,
    Not as we know it,
    Not as we know it,
    It's crap, Alex, but not as we know it, not as we know it, Captain.

    It's worse than that, it's dead, Alex!
    Dead, Alex!
    Dead, Alex!
    It's worse than that, it's dead, Alex! Dead, Alex, dead!

  • Beam me up scotty (Score:2, Insightful)

    by t00le ( 136364 )
    Hopefully it will be well written to spawn the imagination of scientists to be. Looking back a good number of the star trek technologies have come to be a reality simply by nudging the creative energies of young minds.

  • "The franchise is dead, Jim." (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CheeseburgerBrown ( 553703 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @02:27PM (#17242118) Homepage Journal
    You know, if Viacom keeps pulling on those teats like that they're eventually just going to break right off. I mean, there's milking it and there's milking it.

    Does new Trek content really have dominion over any part of our cultural consciousness anymore? Go on: quote me a well known line from Voyager. No, no -- the show. Remember? How could you forget? It not only featured the worst series finale of any TV show ever produced, it also made my ears bleed whenever the quavering caterwauling of that shifty-ass captain sounded.

    And let's not forget Enterprise...no, wait -- let's.

    Anyone who sat through Deanna and Riker's wedding in those waiter uniforms knows what I'm talking about: the whole idea has seen its day, and Star Trek should be buried alive...buried alive...buried alive...

    The franchise peaked with "There are four lights!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tb3 ( 313150 )
      I hate to tell you this, but the franchise peaked with "The City on the Edge of Forever".

    • Yes. The series did peak with the TNG series.

      Unfortunately, After Gene Rodenberry's death in 1991, there just wasn't the same writing skill and philosophy around anymore. Sure, Rick Berman had some OK episodes, but mostly not. It was just obvious as time went on that his thoughts were what made the series as great as it was, and even more obvious when those thoughts were gone.

      And the two-part episode "chain of command" was probably one of the very best episodes ever written and produced.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) *
      Go on: quote me a well known line from Voyager.

      "Get that cheese to sickbay!"

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by EricTheGreen ( 223110 )

      the whole idea has seen its day, and Star Trek should be buried alive...buried alive...buried alive...

      Not at all; they haven't even meaningfully tapped the universe. What they have done is exhausted the "human space jockey" plotline.

      All kinds of potential new stories still exist, just centered on one of the other major players. What about a Klingon centered series, for example? Or the backstory on the Vulcan/Romulan split? The origins of the Borg?

      Plenty of interesting ideas--too bad no one will do anyth

  • But what about mark twain (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KrazeeEyezKilla ( 955150 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @02:31PM (#17242178)
    Why can't they make the Trek spinoff we really want to see: the late 19th century escapades of Mark Twain and Guinan.

  • Why not any other series? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by metlin ( 258108 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @02:34PM (#17242252) Journal
    There are many other series out there, such as Stargate, Babylon 5, Firefly and so on.

    So, is there a reason that we have to keep coming back to Star Trek - The Search for More Money every damn time?

    The franchise is dead. People just don't seem to get it.

    • There's already a post-911 Star Trek on TV (Score:5, Insightful)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Thursday December 14, 2006 @03:01PM (#17242828)
      It's called Battlestar Galactica.

      -Eric

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by metlin ( 258108 )

        BSG is Space Opera meets West Wing, set in space with hot chicks and human-looking robots.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )

      Old franchises never die. They just go on hiatus.

      Consider Battlestar Galactica. The new series is pretty good, but does it really make sense for it to be a remake? From a storytelling point of view, the answer is a definite No: they made so many basic changes, they might as well have started from scratch. But that's not the way Hollywood works. It doesn't like taking chances, and even a remake of a lame Star Wars ripoff is "safer" than a totally new concept.

      That's why Berman was able to retain control of

  • Racism in Star Trek continues apace (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @02:42PM (#17242408) Journal
    Vulcans, who were negotiating reunification with the Romulans, pulled out of the Federation.
    Well, at least they're getting the racist aspects of Star Trek correct. This has been predictable ever since it was revealed that Romulans and Vulcans were the same race.

    Star Trek is dedicated to the idea that every species has one culture, one religion, one government, and they all belong together on the same planet (or at least the same star system). Anybody who dares to marry outside of their race, err, species, will have children that are horribly torn between their two distinct and apparently utterly immiscible heritages. "Oh, woe is me, shall I be Vulcan or Human because it isn't possible for me to forge my own distinct identity, I must only belong to one race, err, species!"

    What other reasons would the Vulcans have for re-uniting with the Romulans? The Vulcans may be the same species but in almost every other way they are night and day; their culture, their philosophies, their approaches to problems, everything except maybe general arrogance. They're geographically separated so far apart that there was enough time before they re-discovered each other that they forgot they were related. They share few to no strategic interests.

    But blood will out, apparently.

    I bet Vulcan or Romulus ends up destroyed at some point (probably Vulcan) and all of the Vulcan refugees go live on Romulus, cause the post-TNG Star Trek mythos can't tolerate races living in two places.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jerf ( 17166 )
      By the way, I am aware you can find a lot of dialog that contradicts this, and the rare isolated counterexample, but the general trend is clearly in this direction. For every isolated counterexample of somebody happily living with people who aren't their species or forging their own cross-cultural identity, you have entire major characters where "conflicts" between their species was their major story line for years at a time: Worf and Spock bigtime, Troi (didn't come up as often but it certainly was an issu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )
        Most of the conflict is about who they belong to, and comes from the characters themselves.

        The people who judge them based on there heritage are always viewed in a negative light.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Jerf ( 17166 )

          Most of the conflict is about who they belong to, and comes from the characters themselves.

          The racism is not in the fact that the characters feel conflict; it is from the underlying casual assumption that they must "belong" to either one or the other.

          My "heritage" is Scotch, Dutch, and German. I would find the idea that I must choose between wearing kilts or wooden shoes or lederhosen racist. In fact I do none of those things and it doesn't seem to cause me any particular distress. Moreover, I find myself i

    • Re:Racism in Star Trek continues apace (Score:5, Insightful)

      by imidan ( 559239 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @03:59PM (#17243928)
      This is exactly the problem that I have with Star Trek. Captain Sisko pops down to Bajor, and stops at some peasant's house, and the ENTIRE design motif is the symbol of the planet Bajor. I mean, people have these things hanging all over the place. Their *windows* are bajor-symbol shaped, for God's sake. Where do you see anything like this on Earth? Where do you see this level of ultra-nationalism in our society? It's almost never a good sign. We've had some in the US since 2001, and I'm quite relieved that this blind "patriotism" is beginning to give way to reason. I'll cut that rant off there, but the point is, race is the defining characteristic of almost anybody on Star Trek these days, but the people of the Trek universe never seem to notice what a vast problem they have with racism.

      The explanation for all of this is just that it makes a convenient shortcut for the writers: they don't have to spend any time on character development for minor characters in a given episode. Want a sneaky, conniving bad guy? Romulan. Want a greedy, selfish bad guy? Ferrengi. Want someone controlled by reason? Vulcan. Any race that you care to mention in Trek is characterized by a handful of primary traits that set them apart from everyone else. And almost every member of that race is an exemplar of their racial identity. I find it tiresome that so much of what happens in Trek is based entirely upon racial stereotypes. And I don't find it much of a consolation when they occasionally throw us a demented Vulcan or a noble Romulan.

      The exception to this, of course, is the human race. Humans tend to be more realistic characters because they're not constrained by such narrow stereotypes. The stereotypes are still there, especially for people who are members of particular factions. But they're a little more tolerable.

      • Re:Racism in Star Trek continues apace (Score:5, Funny)

        by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @04:20PM (#17244348) Journal
        Apparently, the symbol of the human race in the real world is the rectangle, with arches sprinkled in for interest.

        I pity the rest of the races of our galaxy, whose architects are crippled by the fact that they can't use rectangles and arches because unbeknownst to them, twenty thousand light years away, humans already claimed them.

        Pity the poor, primitive Kr'zilt'k of Tomporon, as they attempt to build their first primitive mud huts completely out of isosceles triangles.

        Pity the poor, advanced RRRRRzzzzzzRrrz of ZZZZrrZzRz, as they try to build skyscrapers that look like clumps of mud stuck together, but fail due to the simple laws of materials science, and are thus stuck with cities built out of the equivalent of five-story buildings.

        Curse humanity! Curse them and their claiming of the precious "simple, unadorned rectangle"!
  • It sounds to me like they're finally going to do one of these with some actual drama and grit. I wonder what the temperature in hell is right now.
  • I'd rather see some of the existing trek timespan looked at through a different light, rather than yet another reboot the setting and fly a federation starship around it.


    That was, I think, the strength of DS9, and one reason while, after all the seasons of TOS and TNG, it still had something going for it, whereas Voyager and Enterprise just seemed to flounder.

  • They should learn from two or three good episodes of Andromeda.

    Putting a society back together after embittering losses gives your stories scope for Roddenberrish idealism _and_ gritty drama _and_ thought-provoking moral dilemmas. How many eggs will the Captain break in order to build a safe egg crate for the other eggs? What unexpected opposition will there be? What hidden social problems of the shiny TNG Federation have unearthed themselves?

    Then hire real writers. Somewhere out there, there's a struggling
  • I remember reading that Gene Roddenberry had written a pilot back in the 70s about a postwar federation and a "lone" captain trying to bring the fedeation back together. That idea turned in Andromeda. I wonder how much Andromeda had on this idea?
    • This was also my reaction. They're dusting off Gene's concept again for another spin. This time, though, it won't have Kevin Sorbo to get all confused over the plots and pining for his leather pants.
      • Yeah, Kevin Sorbo's ego really ruined that show. Season one and two were ok, but when Sorbo got more control it went into the shitter fast.
  • [Pause.]

    "Nope, not quite dead yet..."

    [Smack, smack, smack, smack....]

  • Bad reference (Score:4, Insightful)

    by spyrochaete ( 707033 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @03:15PM (#17243096) Homepage Journal
    "The setting is to be a war-torn post-9/11-like Trek universe 150 years after the time of Picard."

    So there will be no liquids or gels allowed on starships? "Tea Earl Grey powdered"

    I'm not even American and it still pains me to see how diluted 9/11 is becoming. Call it war-torn or whatever, but at least reference an event that occurred in a warzone.
  • ...for a singularity fiction based Star Trek. These lamers just aren't going the right direction. Being a longtime Trek fan (I abhor the "Trekkie" moniker) I have to say that I believe I have the ULTIMATE Trek plot ever conceived. Much like their idea, it takes place in the future, but after the occurrence of singularity (the melding of machine and biological, virtual and reality, all that is good and pure and the cleansing of the dirty). But since everyone can live in any of various and simultaneously

  • Oh God No!!! (Score:3)

    by masdog ( 794316 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .godsam.> on Thursday December 14, 2006 @03:33PM (#17243428)
    Come on? Seriously! That is the premise for a new Star Trek series? If TPTB are listening, don't do it! It's bad enough that you ran the franchise into the ground with Voyager and Enterprise. Don't compound your mistake with this idea.

  • ~OT (Score:3, Informative)

    by belg4mit ( 152620 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @04:15PM (#17244250) Homepage
    Even you're even a minor trek fan and enjoy/can tolerate house I recommend tracking
    down some Star Pilot on Channel K (S.P.O.C.K), a nifty little Sci-Fi Swedish band.
    "Never Trust a Klingon" and "The Trouble with Tribbles" are especially good.

  • the further in the future the more magical it is (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @04:37PM (#17244676) Homepage Journal
    Ok so now we're in the 26th Century. Time travel, trading bodies on demand, immortality, whatnot. The further you push this stuff into the future the more it becomes a Science Fantasy Chick Flick Soap Opera. Everything will get magically solved with magic science at the end of every episode. Engines going to blow up? Push the 17th dimension button that supercools them to 1 billion degrees below absolute zero. Then fly through the sun with your sun protector shield. Naturally.

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