will star trek ever return to prime universe?

[Greg Cox]

Ryan8bit wrote:

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Which could maybe still be the case with Star Trek. Maybe the movies will continue with the alternate universe, and maybe a series would be in the prime universe. It probably wouldn't happen that way if the Bad Robot team controls the TV series though. I think it's too hard to say since a TV series doesn't even seem likely for the next few years. There's a lot of variables.

Perhaps, but I don't really see the upside to going back to the old continuity at some later date, especially as time goes by and the previous cycle of Trek shows fades into the misty recesses of memory, at least as far as the general public is concerned.

Better to stick to the modern continuity or start over again . . . .

[Nerys Myk]

Greg Cox wrote:

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To be fair, I'm sure people said similar things back in the eighties before TNG debuted, and yet people accepted a STAR TREK series without Kirk and the usual gang--for seven successful seasons.

On TV at least, TNG was an unqualified success, even if the TOS crew has a better track record on the big screen.

It was successful, but I don't think the characters have become iconic.

[C.E. Evans]

Nerys Myk wrote:

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It was successful, but I don't think the characters have become iconic.

Characters really only need to be likable and interesting enough for a good-sized audience to tune in every week (it's how most successful shows operate). They generally don't reach iconic status until many years later anyway, and then only very few of them.

[EmperorTiberius]

Greg Cox wrote:

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Okay, what about Bond? Suppose somebody had decided decades ago that "no one can act like Connery no matter how many mannerisms they try to replicate." Should they have ditched the character back in the seventies?

Heck, Bela Lugosi was the definitive Dracula for generations, but then Christopher Lee came along, and Frank Langella, and Jack Palance, and Gary Oldman . . .

No actor is irreplaceable. And audiences have proven that they'll accept new actors in classic roles, sometimes over and over and over.

There have been six different SUPERMAN's in my lifetime. Another Kirk or Picard doesn't faze me!

Connory wasn't Bond. Bond was a book character. Anyone could interpret it however they wanted, so anyone who slightly resembles the character could pull it off. Besides, it's not a serious movie, it's just a bunch of gimmicks, who would want that for Trek? I don't think Trek characters are in the same vane as these comic book characters. Star Trek is about the future of humanity, not different people portraying Picard during the 2360's and 2370's over and over and over again. Picard is Stewart, anyone else would be a poor pale immitation.

[EmperorTiberius]

Dukhat wrote:

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Yeah, because Star Trek '09 was a dismal failure that nobody went to see.

BTW, I think the word you were looking for was "abomination," not "abortion." An abortion is the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus. Using that word as a metaphor for a movie would not make you very popular with the female sex. The next time you bash Abrams's film, you might want to be a bit more careful with your choice of derogatory statements.



I believe Ron Moore said it best when he said that people's attitude should be "Yay, another Star Trek series!," not "Oh God, not another Star Trek series..." My fear is that making a new series with a new cast in the prime universe, but just farther into the future, would just give people reaction #2. Changing the time period is not good enough (but don't take my word for that, just see how good that worked with Enterprise). C.E. Evans is right: the characters are the most important thing, not the setting.

It looks like I stepped on some fanboy's toes. I'm not going to go off topic and discuss how pathetic your favorite movie is.

About characters, Star Trek is not about characters as much as setting and general themes. Yeah Kirk, Spock and McCoy were great and certainly played their part, but only to further the theme that Rodenberry had in mind. Gene didnt' want emotions like hatred, jelaousy, lust, infighting etc in Trek, which removes your options of too many character driven stories. He rewrote most of TNG season one. If Kirk and Spock were in some western, nobody would be talking about them today, it was the setting that made them famous.

[EmperorTiberius]

Ryan8bit wrote:

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I think the biggest one that strikes me would be Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. They ignored the third movie completely. But the fourth movie continued from the third despite the TV show. Yeah, Terminator is definitely not as big of a continuity as Trek, but it's at least a decent example. There are other examples in movies where a new direction was forgotten.

Wouldn't that be the case for recasting too?

Personally, I'd want a new set of characters for TV.

Yeah, apparantly new series with original ideas would be immitations, but a faux Kirk and Picard wouldn't.

[Dukhat]

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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It looks like I stepped on some fanboy's toes. I'm not going to go off topic and discuss how pathetic your favorite movie is.

I wasn't discussing the movie. I was discussing your poor choice of words.

[horatio83]

Dream wrote:

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You know, instead of recasting, they could do something original and create new Trek characters to launch a new show or movie!

This. Recasting old characters has little to do with boldly going where no one has gone before.

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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About characters, Star Trek is not about characters as much as setting and general themes.

Precisely. It is understandable (yet of course not excusable, at least Trek fans should know better) though that the new movie has made people forget that the foundation of Trek are not three characters but its general principles.

[King Daniel]

Whether the original intent or not, it's those characters who inspired the Star Trek boom of the 70's - without which, Trek would have faded away as just another cancelled TV series.

We got "more Trek 'verse with new characters" four times, with diminishing returns.

[BillJ]

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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It looks like I stepped on some fanboy's toes. I'm not going to go off topic and discuss how pathetic your favorite movie is.

This is a childish comment.

For me, Star Trek 2009 is not my favorite movie by a wide margin. But if I'm a studio exec betting studio money and my job on Trek, I'm going to go with the iconic characters.

About characters, Star Trek is not about characters as much as setting and general themes. Yeah Kirk, Spock and McCoy were great and certainly played their part, but only to further the theme that Rodenberry had in mind. Gene didnt' want emotions like hatred, jelaousy, lust, infighting etc in Trek, which removes your options of too many character driven stories. He rewrote most of TNG season one. If Kirk and Spock were in some western, nobody would be talking about them today, it was the setting that made them famous.

You do realize for twenty plus years that Kirk, Spock and McCoy were Star Trek. TNG may have been watched by more people in its original run, but they simply didn't have the staying power of the original characters. And the spin-offs are barely a footnote in TV history.

Oh yeah, Roddenberry's final credited story for TNG was Datalore (which was the 12th episode) and there's some disagreement on who was actually rewriting the episodes, Gene or his attorney.

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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Yeah, apparantly new series with original ideas would be immitations, but a faux Kirk and Picard wouldn't.

If I'm a studio head and I see the diminishing returns that each successive series brought, I'm going to go with recognizable characters when attempting to sell the series to the public.

[BillJ]

horatio83 wrote:

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Precisely. It is understandable (yet of course not excusable, at least Trek fans should know better) though that the new movie has made people forget that the foundation of Trek are not three characters but its general principles.

The foundation of Trek was Forbidden Planet, American westerns and police procedurals.

[Deathlok]

I'd love to see Star Trek come back to where it shines best, television. But given the nature of how shows now seem to come and go with monotonous regularity, I can't see a new Star Trek show lasting seven seasons ever again.

Would love to be proven wrong though!

[Greg Cox]

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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Gene didnt' want emotions like hatred, jelaousy, lust, infighting etc in Trek, which removes your options of too many character driven stories. .

Gotta disagree with you there. Have you watched TOS lately? It's full of raw human emotions and conflict. Look at "Conscience of the King," which is all about guilt, murder, insanity, and revenge. Or "The Galileo Seven," with people losing their tempers under stress. Or "And Is there in Truth No Beauty?" which is an emotional drama full of lust and murder and jealousy. Or "The Enemy Within" in which Kirk realizes that he needs his primitive, animalistic side to be a whole human being. Or pretty much any scene with McCoy . . . .

Not sure where people got the idea that TOS was this purely cerebral, utopian exercise in science and rationality. It was full of flawed, passionate, very human characters who were frequently at odds with each other. Ultimately, drama is about character and emotion, the human heart in conflict with itself, not science and sociology.

There's a reason everybody remembers "City on the Edge of Forever"--and that's because it's a tragic love story in which Kirk gets torn up inside . . . .

And I don't think lumping Kirk and Spock in with Bond or Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes or whomever is doing them a disservice. That's pretty good company to be in.

[horatio83]

Nothing about these stupid three characters or "raw emotions" is quintessential Trek. Its principles, created by Roddenberry, sticked to even by anti-Roddenberryians like Meyers and maintained throughout the MAJORITY (there are twenty-eighty seasons, not merely three) of Trek by Berman, are.

[Greg Cox]

horatio83 wrote:

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Nothing about these stupid three characters or "raw emotions" is quintessential Trek. Its principles, created by Roddenberry, sticked to even by anti-Roddenberryians like Meyers and maintained throughout the MAJORITY (there are twenty-eighty seasons, not merely three) of Trek by Berman, are.

Well, one can argue that Roddenberry's own approach varied over the years--and, of course, he had nothing to do with DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and most of the movies.

Me, I confess I prefer the more rough-and-tumble attitude of TOS, and like the way the new movie has brought some of that rambunctious spirit back . . . .

Think of it as getting back in touch with Trek's roots.