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...
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Two things:
1. Brent Spiner would have to lose some weight
2. They've got to get rid of Data's emotion chip. That's when Data lost his charm, I feel.
Otherwise, bring it on.
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Yes. Generations utterly ruined Data's character for the sake of an "Oh.... shit!" joke, destroyed the Enterprise-D for the sake of an action scene and killed off Picard's family for the sake of a cheap shock and never bothered to explore the ramifications of this.
Not to mention the bad-decision making:
Picard: "Guinan, can I leave the Nexus?"
Guinan: "Where would you go?"
Picard: "I don't understand."
Guinan: "Time has no meaning here. So if you leave, you can go anywhere, at any time."
Picard: "Alright, I know precisely where I want to go. Veridian III, just before Soran launches the missile. Because, even though I obviously don't care about changing the past and preserving the time-line as I once did, I don't feel tempted to go back a few more weeks to warn my
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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, Funny)
I agree, Patric Stewart would make an EXCELLENT Klingon or other bad guy for the series.
I would rather see Star trek redone with starfleet being the weak guy and getting our asses handed back regularly. Combat with the klingons needs to be "OH CRAP! RUN!" instead of this "I am here to reason with you, can we sit down for tea and crumpets?"
They started the right track with enterprise, but it needs to be far more gritty. More death, A sea of red-shirts flowing out the ship and popping like popcorn whenever a hull breach happens. Kirk getting pissed and launching all 8 photo torpedoes at the single ship and then vowing to exterminate that species for killing ensign Davis. he can even rip his shirt and hyperventilate when he does it... That would be very much like the first season.
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.
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Sounds like you never saw ANY Star Trek. It never was about fighting, it always was "diplomacy whenever possible."
How many times Kirk had to discuss with some alien race (well, most of the time, Spock) about our "old, barbarian ways" and how we learnt how to be civilized.
How many times Q called humans "barbarians" to Picard?
Star Trek was always "brains over power", fight only when it really needs.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
A bad actor he may be (who had his ass handed to him by Ricardo Montalban in that movie), but every captain of every TV or movie spaceship since has, and always will be, compared to Shatner's Kirk.
Sometimes you don't need talent to achieve immortality; you just need to be recognizably unique.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
The fact that Shatner is so iconic shows that, bad acting aside, he has presence. Sometimes, that's all you need. Will be interesting to see how the new guy plays Kirk.
Eventually, the original Star Trek roles could become a kind of entrenched character set, similar to Shakespeare characters. A hundred years from now, folks will be arguing over different actor's interpretations of Kirk and Spock in Amok Time.
And then there will be the inevitable Star Trek in the park productions and the all nude/gender swapped productions.
I weep for the future.
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He is not a bad actor, in Boston Legal he did a FANTASTIC job. it's just that shatner is not cut out for the stiff captain role but that of a loose cannon mad cow disease old guy.
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...a loose cannon mad cow disease old guy.
I so want to see this on YouTube.
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Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
"They've got to get rid of Data's emotion chip. That's when Data lost his charm, I feel."
Without his emotion chip he would fail to grasp the full irony of your statement.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!!!"
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Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Deep Suck 9 was just that...
Oh please. DS9 was decent-to-poor in the early goings, much like TNG, but once the Dominion War plot arch started up, it went from good to truly great. 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. Pity it seems to get such a raw deal from a certain subset of the Trek fanbase.
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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.
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In a way, the wormhole aliens were simply a logical extension of the ideas they began exploring with the character of Q. Q chose to present himself as easily relatable, essentially a human with boundless control over space and time. However, it was easy for Picard to dismiss Q as a god due to his human appearance, which included such flaws as hubris and a willingness to pass judgment. The Prophets, on the other hand, had a completely different non-linear perspective that was not friendly to human comprehens
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: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, Insightful)
Star Trek for me was supposed to be an idealized future, and we are the good guys. It had to tread carefully to avoid becoming overly preachy (and failed on occasion), but I'm not sure I like a darker or more warlike federation.
Ah, but that's not what DS9 ever portrayed. What they portrayed was an idealized future where the good guys were forced into war because, guess what, sometimes you have to fight to survive. And the minute your goal is survival, well surprise surprise, it's suddenly a lot harder to be idealistic.
I find this fascinating, though. To me, the entire reason Trek was flawed was because it's idealistic future was so wildly unbelievable. I'm sorry, but even in a world of limitless energy, food, and freedom, with perfect, idealized human beings, there's still going to be individuals/groups/races out there try to eat the good guys' lunch... you know, like the Dominion. And the minute you admit that, you have to be open to the idea of conflict with those people. And who would believe in a real, war-like conflict that didn't involve compromising one's ideals on occasion? At minimum, odds are you're going to have to kill on occasion, and last I checked, that's not a terribly nice, idealistic thing to do.
Then again, at least in my mind, this is the difference between sci-fi, as entertainment, and sci-fi as an actual intellectual genre. IMHO, Trek, in its idealized form, can only succeed in the former. To truly examine the human condition, a prerequisite to achieving the latter, you actually have to admit that humans are not, and will never be, perfect, idealized creatures living in a perfect, idealized world.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious? DS9 was The Care Bears Fussy Day compared to the ugliness of a real war. The producers didn't have the budget or the political will from the network to add any real ugliness.
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Are you serious? DS9 was The Care Bears Fussy Day compared to the ugliness of a real war
Heh, alright, fine, *some* of the attendant ugliness. Obviously there's no way they could do it "properly", Saving-Private-Ryan-style, but they at least *tried* (hell, one of the main characters got his leg blown off, for god sake!).
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hell, one of the main characters got his leg blown off, for god sake!
I think Nog's shift from goofy comic relief at the beginning of the show to bitter war veteran was one of the better highlights of the show.
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Deep Suck 9 was just that...
Oh please. DS9 was decent-to-poor in the early goings, much like TNG, but once the Dominion War plot arch started up, it went from good to truly great. 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. Pity it seems to get such a raw deal from a certain subset of the Trek fanbase.
Also, the limitation the original series, TNG and Voyager is that every member of the cast is all part of the same crew, with the same background (Starfleet Academy). They're all on the same team, playing by the same rules, which means any conflict (which is what makes things interesting) must be external - it's us vs. them, or us vs. some inexplicable spatial phenomenon, or some alien influence is affecting our people. You can't have any conflict between members of the cast, and there's no opportunity fo
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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?
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Seven Days was a show based entirely around reset-button plots, and it was awesome.
Star Trek/Lost Mix (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Star Trek/Lost Mix (Score:5, Funny)
*shudder* I think what you've gone off is the deep end.
Re:Star Trek/Lost Mix (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think I'm the only one, either.
No, there's loads of other slashdotters who miss their mommies.
Hmmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
And Voyager was such a great series. Sarcasm intended.
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That is clearly a matter of opinion, don't you think? I, for one, prefer it to TOS. Then again, I even prefer Enterprise to TOS ;)
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I judge Star Trek writers based on whether and how many holodeck episodes they're responsible for. If you wrote holodeck episodes for Voyager, which was about a spaceship alone in the Delta quadrant, you get double the points docked.
The holodeck killed writers' imaginations to cater to the wardrobe department's fantasies.
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Not one lesbian kiss scene in the whole series, so much for 'where no man has gone before'
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If Fuller is bringing Trek back maybe he can get Robert Hewitt Wolfe (a DS9 writer) to write some scripts. I really liked what he did with Andromeda in the early days.
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(Janeway and Tuvok are in a room; there's a door on one of the walls.)
Janeway: We're trapped. What should we do now?
Tuvok: I could try to modify the door in such a way that it is open.
Janeway: How do you want to do that?
Tuvok: I will pull this lever.
Janeway: I don't have any better ide
"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
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Even worse, since they're in difference universes, the navy ship has the ability to press it's own oil from shale it finds, create food incredibly cheaply, and has a ready supply of spare parts if anything breaks - the merchant doesnt
You lost me. Maybe you could try a car analogy?
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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
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By the way, if you win a Trek argument on slashdot, you automatically get laid tonight. I promise.
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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.
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(I'd take orders from Janeway any day!)
If the primary selling point of the show is that some people have the hots for the Captain, and those people aren't nerds' girlfriends, the show is fucking over before it began.
Voyager was more of everything Trek - they found out that it was too much. The only thing they didn't have enough of was camp. You have to be able to laugh! Personally, I've never enjoyed Trek so much as I did in Season 4 of Enterprise, so I may be the wrong guy to talk to... but seriously, you are not allowed to use story as a bulle
Having written for voyager isn't a good thing (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you liked hearing about the latest Fucktoquadillion gigastream of pure hexashitrillic energy the borg were beaming at voyager's past timestream in order to attract the hirogen to hunt them and the leprosy dudes to steal their organs.
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I loved Pushing Daises but... (Score:2)
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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, eith
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.
Let the grim reaper do his job (Score:5, Insightful)
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All I know (Score:4, Funny)
Rick Berman: TNG
Bryan Fuller: Failed ABC series and Voyager
OP loses credit
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.
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Nemesis and Enterprise vs Voyager.
I can't even think of a joke that doesn't involve sodomy.
Trailer, Really? (Score:5, Funny)
"If J.J. Abrams' reboot is successful (and the latest trailer suggests it will be!)..."
Yes, because trailers are always the best source for determining a film's success. In fact, why bother releasing the movie, since its success is assured?
I hope not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Voyager? Wasn't that the worst one of all? That machine should have been a little more banged up at the end but yet they had even more resources than when they started out. I know trek is BS but damn the same stories over and over get old after a while.
Let it die for a few more years at least.
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Voyager? Wasn't that the worst one of all?
If you honestly believe that, then I envy your ability to completely erase Enterprise from your memory.
Does the world really need more Trek sequels? If we have to make sequels, couldn't we at least make one in the Babylon 5 or Blake's 7 universe?
Star Trek is in "The Future" (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Trek was always a fantasy to me as an engineer about what 'could be'. Just over the progression of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY you could see incremental improvements in technology. Voice controls actually worked, bio-neural networks, etc. STOP recreating (and fucking up) the original story line.
TOS happened, it's done with. Quit going before it. Stop milking the lives of Scotty, Kirk, or the beginning of the beginning of the federation.
Set something 90 years out from the end of VOY. Put the first Cardassian (or other former enemy) on the bridge (Worf). Maybe bump up Warp speed or another method of going fast (But not Warp 10 retarded shit VOY broke out). Invite some scientists writers, the writers of Futurama, to the initial writings and get some pseudo-science based technologies. Just make up some new shiny tech. Don't fill it with too much technobabble. (Stargate was a good balance in my mind).
You could easily make it dark too. DS9 is hands down my favorite series.
Federation Civil War?
Fall of the Federation?
STOP GOING BACK IN TIME.
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.
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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.
That is because they were idiots and didn't see the potential for more realistic stories along the lines of the sixth and seventh seasons of DS9. The final seasons of DS9 were really among the best Star Trek stories ever produced because they reminded us that despite advanced technology and an "evolved understanding" (never really understood how that was supposed to work, human nature is human nature no matter how evolved we might become in our understanding) there were still wars, petty squabbles, treacher
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-.
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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.
Autonomous computers happened. Before, technology was more or less always operated by humans. To "Go where no man has gone before" got the addendum "but where a workforce of robots have photographed the landing site, built the base, commmunicated with any natives and so on." Look at the Mars rovers, when do you think we'll ever get there? By the time humans come along it'll have been poked, prodded and probed in pretty much every way and the passengers close to tourists (ok, so I'm exaggerating a bit).
While
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Please give me directions to the world you live in, because it doesn't sound a lot like mine, where scientific discovery is telling me that the chlorinated organic chemicals we've been spewing out for the last half century are polluting most of our dwindling supply of fresh water, resulting in the next generation of people having shorter life expectancies than their parents for the first
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 lifet
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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 pre
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I don't understand why many people like 'dark' Trek. If you like dark sci-fi, watch something else. Star Trek is optimistic, and if you change that, it is no longer Star Trek.
old skool (Score:2)
Cooooool!
How do you reinvent Trek? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I'd say Firefly was a great model on how to do a space show that wasn't Trek but it died after a season. I'm not really sure how that happened given the fan support, it must have just been Fox superdickery more than anything else. But aside from that, Firefly gave us a space show that was like Trek only in so much as there were spaceships -- everything else was as different from Trek as it was from other shows. Even the basic premise -- "Imagine you made a TV show about Han Solo before he and Chewie joined the Rebellion" -- even that description carries certain assumptions the show blew away.
Galactica has good production values and good acting but the writing is a crime. Half of the uber-plot of the show is a mystery, what's the Cylon's angle? What are their motivations? Why did they do what they did? And a good mystery writer needs to know how it happened before the first chapter's written because support for the whodunnit has to be written in to every subsequent chapter. Not having a clue and just pulling it out of his ass at the end is cheap and unsatisfying and that's the approach Galactica's taken. Heroes as well for that matter, and Heroes season 1 was completely awesome, it was only the later post-Fuller seasons that turned into a giant crap sandwich. But as far as BSG goes, the original was completely derivative of Star Wars and the remake seems to draw a lot more from network dramas in terms of pacing and feel.
I'd say Babylon 5 was the true post-Trek show. You could see the inspiration from Trek but it also drew on a hell of a lot of other sources, really steeped in scifi goodness. It moved beyond what Trek was and DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, they were all muddling around at the same level. They never really rose to the challenge. The times they tried, they were just ripping off B5 plots instead of doing something bigger, better, and smarter. And that's sad because for all of the greatness that was B5, there was still room for improvement.
I remain in the "stick a fork in Trek and call it done" camp. I'll take a look at the new movie just to be charitable but my expectations are extremely low. I'm willing to be surprised. I just feel that if they really want to do a wonders of space exploration and discovery show, they should really nix the whole Trek thing and come up with something brand new. The CGI has come so far these days, they can get away with stuff that couldn't have been imagined.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if it'd work to revamp the CG on B5 with modern tech and full-battles instead of the 90's era "same 3 scenes" style battles and then re-release it as a new show.
Since there's no production cost other than redoing the graphics they can probably afford to weather through the first season or two's soap opera in space setup before Sheridan starts making it all better.
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Make it a legal drama [battlestarwiki.org] on a planet you know gets destroyed in a few years so everything that happens is irrelevant.
Oh, I thought you wanted how NOT to reinvent a story.
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But aside from that, Firefly gave us a space show that was like Trek only in so much as there were spaceships -- everything else was as different from Trek as it was from other shows.
Man, it was Buffy in space. Is that really a good thing?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Aliens who look exactly like us save for bumpy foreheads?
Well, at least they devoted a TNG episode to explaining that. Haven't you seen "The Chase"?
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!
Now, I love Pushing Daisies... (Score:2, Funny)
"Our five year 3 days and 32 minute minute mission..."
Not sure about the reboot. (Score:2)
As excited as I am for the new film (And this is from someone who was never a fan of TOS), I'm not sure continuing on the reboot with a new series is such a good idea.
I don't feel the Star Trek universe is in any way "finished", 2 of it's most successful incarnations had nothing to do with the Enterprise, while one of them that did was a near-failure on nearly all fronts. There's a lot of scope left there that could easily be looked into.
My issue with the reboot is that it's set to create two completely dif
more ToS would be a step backwards (Score:2)
I had hoped that,as a society we had matured past this fear of the unknown or different. Maybe not.
However, to produce a more thoughtful, TNG-like series does require more writing talent that simply the ability to produce cheap thrills from excess body-counts (heroes: are you listening? thought not). In the current climate, the money people might just decide to fall back on the old blood and thunder recipe just to scrape some extra revenue,
Re: (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 episo
It'll fail (Score:5, Insightful)
One more point of many more I could make. Science fiction has taken the depressing direction of the failure of humanity. Star Trek I was about the success of mankind. Get back to that. Apparently "serious" series makers did not feel very adult making a story in which mankind succeeds. Ok, do it again. Get them lost. Get them destroyed. Get them wandering around. Make the characters "real" by making them mean, nasty, slutty, jerks. Make them inferior and struggling. Have the female characters engage in comments about how stupid, inferior, ridiculous, juvenile male motivations and behavior are. Fail as a series.
Oh, and don't engage in the ridiculous, like making a holographic doctor or having an alien doctor who knows more about human medicine than humans. Jeesh, who came up with that grating piece of nonsense? Someone making a job for a friend? And the sick bay should not be bigger and more technologically advanced than the bridge. etc etc etc.
The future will be more of the same, only different. Remember that.
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Uh, yeah.
I enjoy strong female characters. Wishy-washy girls are damn boring. Give me a woman who can kick my ass when I try to grab hers and I'm hers. She needs to be intellectually and emotionally bad-ass too. Hell, if she can understand the DCTs behind that JPEG and adjust the DoF for optimum bokeh while she takes a picture of her kickboxing team, then I'll make my case to be her man.
It's one thing to be with a gentle little thing just out of college... It's another thing entirely to get down with a wom
Just continue ST:ENT. (Score:3)
Where no Sci Fi show has gone before (Score:3, Insightful)
We've done the five year mission, then went forward several hundred years to the next generation, did the space station thing, got lost in a new sector of the galaxy and then went back to the beginning. Now we go back to the beginning, again?
I'm sorry but Star Trek has got boring. It follows a formula, new technology, new badder enemy, war, combat, new technology, beat bad guys - go home. Every ST after TNG followed the exact same formula, days of our lives in space.
The only hope for ST is what made it interesting in the very beginning TOS and TNG, science fiction Forget all the lame 'b' grade effects, effects are the only thing that have made trek pleasing to watch, it was the imagination that filled in the gaps when I first watched TOS, and at the time it was the most ground breaking thing on TV - fuck IT WAS TV - and the story was king!!!
but, no no no these shows are seen as 'franchises', not a craft that sparks the imagination of the viewer, as one lame idea after another is tried. I'm sure I'm not the only sci fi fan that is banging their head in frustration. Now I'm sure that the new Star Trek movie will work, but it will work in the way that when a Chinese artisan copies a work of art faithfully and skill fully, yet they still don't understand the idea that brought the art into being in the first place.
For Star Trek to work in the future (are you listening Star Trek producers) you need to get back to what Star Trek was and should be a vehicle for hard science fiction. Go read Greg Bear Eon, Eternity (get Greg Bear to write the episodes) then call on Allister Reynolds and Robert Reed or half a dozen other sci fi writers that other slashdotters could name. Better yet, make the entire story Open Source or Creative commons and start asking for submission for stories from the fans. Two words Paramount BIG FUCKING IDEAS.
For fuck sake make Star trek in your face science fiction again, or just say it's over, cause the way it's being killed is just sad.
trek is a multi-generational series (Score:3, Insightful)
The original Trek was military culture familiar to the WWI and Korean era veterns of the 1960s.
The New Generation was 'yuppies in space' - well-healed baby boomers, team organization, yada, yada, yada.
The newer Treks never quite caught the pathos of the younger generations. The GenY's are individualistic and artistic, sort of like "herding cats in space" - not your corporate team players. Another Roddenberry scifi show called Andromeda captured this pathos better.
I cant really characterize the newest adults - the 9/11, Iraq War, and Second Depression generation. The generation always plugged into electronic communication and networks.
The New Generation made an interesting prediction that seems to be coming true - the death of television. I recall one episode where some 21st century types were revived from hibernation and asked about television and money and the crew said they didnt do those any more. Roddenberry's uptopia did not have money or TV.
Or they could re-ignite Star Trek like this (Score:3, Insightful)
They could make a show named 'Star Trek' which shows the exploration of space, first contact with an alien civilization, how faster-than-light travel was developed, etc. And slowly progress towards the 24th century, to the level of Star Trek we know.
In this new show, the characters will watch Star Trek (TOS, TNG, DS9) just for fun. Actors from previous series could make cameo appearances as themselves, being interested in space travel.
The show could be serious, almost a documentary, which shows the dramatic side of space exploration, the politics, the international competition, the effects on people' lives, the change of culture. It could also have a side like X-Files, with conspiracies about UFOs etc, which are later resolved.
To Boldly Go (Score:3, Informative)
When the politically correct newer versions of Trek came out, and changed the line "To boldly go where no man has gone before" - which was one of the greatest ever! - to a neutered, lame "no ONE has gone".... it pretty much jumped the shark.
Yeah, glad that Berman's gone (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, everyone knows that only the first two seasons of TNG were any good (The Naked Now deserved a frigging Emmy!), after which Roddenberry died and Berman shitted it up with characters like Reginald Barclay, Gowron, and Locutus of Borg. Berman could never help create a character as perfect as Wesley Crusher and he should've stopped trying. And then he comes out with that boring, actionless piece of fluff called Deep Space Nine, which was so awful that it ran for only seven seasons in an oversaturated market. Some Cardassian tailor with a mysterious past? Who cares? An all-out war between the Federation and some major dominion in the Gamma Quadrant, filled with intrigue and plot twists? Who wants to see that?
Sarcasm aside, I think what CmdrTaco meant is that we should hope for the end of the era of Brannon Braga [wikipedia.org]. He's the one primarily responsible for Voyager and Enterprise, and the only things he did that were good for the franchise were because of Ronald Moore.
Rob
Starships are done, done, done. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:yeah right. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean seriously, we have enough shows dramatizing the trials and tribbleations of kids in school.
Re:Like what? (Score:4, Funny)
I wish that's all Fringe did. Unfortunately, the writers of Fringe kidnapped, beat, and sodomized science in front of it's own children. Then, when done, gave each other high-fives for doing such a great job.
It's like they have some kind of scientific buzzword dartboard in their office that they use to write the jargon that their characters use.
Re:I saw Janeway (Score:5, Funny)
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
That was really Admiral Janeway who came from an alternate timeline to dine at Olive Garden.
Fun fact: the ablative hull armor is actually made of stale Olive Garden breadsticks.
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.
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Babylon 5 we appreciated the serial nature but couldn't get past how bad each individual episode was
How far in did you watch it? It gets seriously better about half way through the second season. Some of the season 1 episodes are painful to watch (I'm primarily thinking of TKO here), but by the time you get to season 3 that just doesn't happen any more.