Goodbye Prime?

Is it safe to assume that we will never see the prime universe again? I love Star Trek: Continues and Star Trek: Phase II, but they are fan fiction in the end and will not garner as much attention nor ever be on Memory Alpha. I honestly think that Star Trek Nemesis was our last view of current Star Trek.

 

The "prime" universe is still there. You just won't see any new adventures in it onscreen.

Time marches on.

 

Never say never. They once said Kirk would never be on the screen again too.

 

It's done with. It's told stories spanning centuries, any more into the future and the technology becomes too preposterous, and we can't really go further back from ENT and tell any expansive Trek stories.

They've gone to great lengths to establish this timeline. I haven't agreed with every decision that JJ Trek has made, not by a long chalk, but I want to see stories in this timeline progress. Going back to the prime universe will confuse and most probably alienate new fans that have been on board since the start of JJ Trek.

As we saw with the box office take of Nemesis, just us old school fans are no longer enough to carry the franchise...

 

It is really hard to tell because TPTB are the only ones that haven't said anything about it. Trek could be headed for another reboot that wipes the entire slate clean (including the Abramsverse) for all we know.

 

The prime timeline continues in the novels. That's good enough for me.

 

Prime continuity isn't completely dead. It is still alive through books and Star Trek Online. If both of those dry up then I would say CBS is done thinking of prime continuity as anything but a nostalgia property.

 

It was JJ that cared about Prime continuity by actually killing it. He could have just rebooted with no explanation as to why everything was unfolding differently and TPTB would not care.

 

The last time we saw the Prime Universe in on-screen canon was 2009, since parts of Star Trek (2009) took place in the Prime Universe, both at the very beginning before the Narada emerged, and as recollected by Spock Prime in his mind-meld with nuKirk.

 

The books are one thing that will never die for Star Trek. I think we have many, many years/decades with Trek novels. Sure they aren't numbered, nor are they all series-specific, but I feel like we will have them for a long time. You are correct regarding Star Trek: Online as well. I was just referring to the Star Trek that we see on television. You know, the Star Trek the general viewer watches, aka canon Trek.

It would be cool if Star Trek: Online were canon. But, it's probably not. It's funny, because one of the creators of the failed 2013 Star Trek game, said it was canon. I guess that would refer to canon in the Abramsverse and not the Prime universe.

Anyway, yes you are correct. Prime is survived by the books and Online.

 

Are people still expecting the movies and TV shows to go back to the old continuity at some point? Why on Earth would TBTB want do that? That defeats the whole point of rebooting the franchise.

Now it may well be that some future STAR TREK series will want to start its own continuity, and ignore the current cycle of films, but going back to previous continuity? That would be like the Batman movies going back to the Tim Burton days or even the Adam West version.

I can't see that ever happening . . . .

 

You're right. What we REALLY need to a new Star Trek timeline in the style of the Adam West Batman version.

I'd watch that.....

 

I pray that we never see Captain Picard rebooted, leave the endless recasts for that TOS crew.

 

Well, JJ Abrams shouldn't have made it an alternate reality. He should have just gotten rid of the whole timeline changing thing and not have Leonard Nimoy in the movie. By him doing that, there'd be no question that this was a totally new universe and nothing else.

However, I could see why he bothered to include the exsistance of the prime universe. He wanted to have Star Trek '09 be a film for both old fans and garner new ones.

 

There's no such thing as "prime" Trek in the sense that fans envision. There's the source material (Star Trek) and derivative works based on Star Trek. Rick Berman's Star Trek spinoffs were simply one derivative version of the source material. Others will come and go, no more or less relevent than the Berman-verse.

 

Having Nimoy in the movie was worth all the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

 

A tactic which, as we all know, was not entirely successful.

Prime continuity is a pretty wide creative palette. You've got TOS, TAS, the movies, and TNG onward. I think if prime were to come back it would be as different from what we last saw of Berman-era Trek in Nemesis as TNG felt different from the TOS movies. Probably more, since they can't cannibalize any sets the way TNG did.

So I think some of the strident dismissals that point to Berman running the franchise into the ground ignore how much Trek can be allowed to change just by moving the chronology forward enough and giving the reigns to a new team.

It's just that people can't seem to get the Bermanisms out of their head, so they automatically assume that a new Prime Trek would carry over all of that baggage that weighed it down so much.

 

So herein drops the other shoe. What's the advantage of coming back to the Prime Universe at all, if coming back would be so different as to be essentially in name only? Just in case it's not clear, that's a rhetorical question.

 

To be able to survive, Star Trek has to change. The JJ verse is fine as a vehicle for that end. However, with that said they need to loose the swoopy-doopy /giant star ship ethos and lean a little more toward the original designs. The stories will evolve from one to the next much as the difference between the latest two outings have changed one form the other...

 

If we never see the prime Trek universe again, I'm OK with it. I have accepted JJ's version of Trek, and would rather have that than nothing at all. Besides, the prime universe is still there, someplace.