reimagining the series

I would be glad if we get a new Star Trek series, but I would rather that we get one in the Prime Timeline, set after the destruction of Romulus and focusing on not only Starfleet but the Klingons and surviving Romulans as well.

 

I don't care about the Klingons or the surviving Romulans, I want a series that has bigger-than-life heroes exploring the final frontier.

 

I think the field is ripe for some creative TV personality to come along and make a new series that does just that. Star Trek does not have a copyright on space or exploration. It sounds like many hard-core Trek fans feel as you do, that we are craving heroic figures exploring space. Why have we not seen anyone take a risk and create a new scifi series that has these points as a central theme?

 

I'm a The Only Series fan, and I've mentioned this before in other threads; my personal preference for more TOS would be a CGI series. I'll try not to pile-on with more JJ-bashing - I know a lot of people like his vision, and that's fine too - but for me, I would not be interested in any way with fuTrek reimagining TOS as a series.
A CGI series would allow so many possibilities, stories could be told in any time period since the characters could be depicted at any age.

ME

 

I've no interest in a cgi series. For one thing it would be hugely time consuming and expensive to do cgi characters somewhat realistically and even they they just look like animated mannequins. No thank you. I'd rather see a decent animated series rather than cgi.

 

I'm cool with the others but I never rewatch them. I do watch MBC (my beloved clamshells) of TOS. So maybe in practice that is the only series for me too.

 

For a long time, I've been an cheerleader for bringing a new sci-fi space series to TV. I don't see the point in beating the Trek universe like a dead horse.

But, if they bring Trek back, it should feature Kirk and Spock.

 

A space adventure series is probably seen as unacceptably expensive to TV and network suits. This is the era of the cheap "reality" series. Specialty channels like HBO could do SF if they were inclined. Period pieces like Boardwalk Empire and particularly Game Of Thrones are heavy in terms of costuming and sets so an SF series really shouldn't be that much more involved.

I think the real sticking point is something like space adventure is seen strictly as Star Trek without considering that you can go beyond those ideas. In many respects Trek and it's like, in all their incarnations, is space adventure as envisioned by 1920s-1960s perspectives. There's room to expand on that, but hardly anyone seems to see it so we have the pervasive sense of "been there, done that."

I love Star Trek, and I can imagine seeing it perpetuated in some ways, but I think we would be better served by seeing something new. And one advantage would be side-stepping Trek's baggage and expectations.

New ideas, that the general audience didn't expect or ask for, can and do happen that capture audience appeal. Star Trek was one and Star Wars another as well as The X-Files and Game Of Thrones. And there a lot of other concepts with their smaller scale followings. So new ideas that work are possible.

But someone with an idea has to convince a network that it can be done.

 

You have to realize that this is a totally different time, than back in the 60's, and our perspective has changed ALOT since then. Now, if you could go back in time, and totally rethink all of the original series, redesign the ship and bridge, and show them what we have now, 50 years after the fact, in the way of technology, and then have Shatner and company come in and film, that would be something.
I have always said that in 300 years from now, there will be NO instrumentation at all, all displays will either be holographic or just so the individual person can see, like plugged into that person's brain or optic nerve. There would be no elevators, just a transport door that would jump you to whichever floor that you are thinking of!
Someone, a long time ago, said that having the Transporter room on a ship, that used Phasers and Tricorders like they did, would be like Columbus having a color TV on board the Santa Maria! I never forgot that, and I have spent many days wondering about how Star Trek would really look like, in 300 years.

 

Reality will always inevitably outpace science fiction particularly in the visual medium. Television writers can think only so far ahead. There's also the fact that some truly advanced ideas seen in SF literature might not translate well in the visual medium. And beyond science and technology how different can you change human society, human behaviour and even the human form before a lot of the audience can't really relate to it anymore? That's why the vast majority of far future science fiction still portrays humanity very much like contemporary humanity, so that the audience can still relate.

There are a lot of ideas in Trek that are still viable from the perspective that those technologies don't yet exist if they ever will. The aesthetics of TOS dosen't change that. Indeed in many respects the later spin-offs didn't really advance the technology much either.

The idea of expansive space navies (such as Starfleet) and galactic governments (such as the Federation and various empires) is a futuristic extension of our own history. But in more realistic terms your civilization would have to command vast wealth and resources to make that happen. You also have to set up the right motivations.

A plethora of intelligent races is also an extension of diverse peoples being encountered by the navies of the ancient and old worlds. But, again, from a more realistic standpoint that's not as likely for far future space travel. From a science fiction standpoint I'd argue for a lot fewer races and spread further apart (for sake of potential stories because humans only stories likely wouldn't be as interesting---alien life is pretty much integral to space adventure science fiction).

A TOS communicator is not a cellphone, but rather an independent receiver/transmitter that doesn't require any sort of support system and has a range of tens of thousands of miles. But the form of that communication system can be changed to something much more evolved. The TNG badge was an evolution of the concept, but perhaps an even more evolved system would be an implant.

Phasers are essentially better named rayguns, but science fiction and real science has all sorts of speculations for potential futuristic weapons. A ship mounted gamma ray laser (if one could be built) could be far more powerful than anything we've actually seen Trek phasers do. The idea of a photon torpedo---essentally a FTL projectile with a matter/antimatter warhead is still a pretty damned potent weapon. Hell, a handful of ball bearings launched at relativistic speads would be a helluva destructive weapon. Forcefields (deflector shields) can be rationalized with current speculative technologies such as using magnetism in a novel way.

The transporter is still a viable science fiction idea, and if you have to have one you can easily rethink how it's done. As said upthread imagine a portal much like the Iconian device seen in TNG's "The Last Outpost." Something conceptually similar to that was used in the comic title The Authority.

If your ship's computer system was a genuine AI then a lot of ship's functions could be handled by it rather than specific personnel. The ship's guidance and navigation could actually pilot the ship in acoordance with the Captain's directions (although there should still be someone(s) aboard trained in those things if needed). I'd argue for the presence of more robots in space adventure although not the humanoid kind. Rather more like utility robots that could perform hightly repetitive but necassary tasks such as regular ship's maintenance. Nanotech was mentioned in TNG, but it would have had to exist extensively in TOS already.


More than a century ago Jules Verne wrote a book called Paris In The Twentieth Century in which he envisioned all kinds of things that wouldn't be a reality for decades to a century. From the late 19th century perspective his ideas were pure fantasy as he really had little then current existent science and technology to extrapolate from. There are fundamental ideas in TOS that can still be used, but they simply have to be given new forms.

SF literature isn't running out of ideas, but film and television sci-fi tends to lag several years to decades behind the literature.

 

Just a nitpick: it was "Contagion".

But I think the rest of your post is spot on.

 

Setting SF literature aside there are all kinds of books and online sources that explore speculative sciences and technologies and some of them by reputable scientists as well as SF authors. There's a wealth of resource available as a jumping off point and it shouldn't be that hard to build on it.

Part of the reason I wasn't wowed by Avatar was because I read about all the ideas in it ten to tweny years earlier. That and the cutesy oversized smurf aliens.

 

The speed at which the rate of change is accellerating is increasing. I think we cannot imagine what humanity will be like in even 100 years. Certainly we will be augmented, which will be an outmoded idea by then and I think it likely we will be mentaly linked. Roddenberry in his last interviews thought so, that a more directly linked social organism was inevitable, but that the Borg had to be vilified for tv.

 

Well some ideas might not work for humanity in TV and film SF because the general audience might not identify with it so you use the idea with an alien race. Your heroes in particular have to be accessible and identifiable to the viewers.

 

Wouldn't that essentially be the same thing again? I mean, a series focusing on other races rather then Starfleet might be an interesting thing.
Personally, I would want two Star Trek shows-one focusing on the traditional Star Trek stuff-Starfleet, exploration and philosophy, and the other focusing on the other races.

 

I just want Star Trek to be "Star Trek". The name kinda says it all for me. I don't care for them trying to squeeze other types of shows into the Star Trek format. If I want a series that is a political drama, I'll want a series to watch that is a political drama not a political drama wearing Star Trek's "clothes" (same goes for other formats). The beauty of Star Trek's format is that you can tell all different kinds of stories without attaching yourself long-term to any of them.

I want Star Trek to have a sense of fun and adventure. I don't care about the mechanics of the Federation government nor do I care about the dynamics of the Romulan or Klingon cultures outside of how it affects their interactions with our heroes.

YMMV.

 

^^

 

very agreed, I just went tangent

 

I think a rebooted Star Trek should have been done before, and instead of Abrams getting hold of the franchise.
Ive always argued with fellow Star Trek fans of my age that it would have been a great move to recast the original characters for a long term series, with the best available Sci Fi writers on board who wouldnt have fucked with timelines and alternative universes etc.

Enterprise sort of paved the way with exciting special effects that could have been developed for a new imagining of the Original Series, old friends and old foes could have been revisited.

I think the boat has been missed now, but it would have been good and interesting to see a new triumverate of Kirk, Spock and Bones grow as characters with new actors in the roles.

 

If I were bringing TOS back to TV, I wouldn't remake the original episodes. I'd just set the first episode of the new series the week after "Turnabout Intruder" ( or "The Counter-Clock Incident"). New cast, new costumes, new sets, new SFX but the same "continuity". And no, I would not explain any changes. They just are.