Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND

[Franklin]

What NuFans dismiss as "baggage" is really a rich history in universe that writers can use for story hooks, or just neat details to use as "easter eggs".

How is it that Trek Prime can't come back but Dr. Who managed to hold onto its canon? Sure, Nu Who is a reboot in the sense of its modern style, but it never jettisoned canon, going so far as to bring Sarah Jane Smith back and give her a spinoff series (before Elisabeth Sladen's untimely death). So I don't buy the idea that franchises eventually must buckle under the weight of their collective history.

As far as Dr. Who's adherence to canon v. Trek's, nuTrek has not violated any canon at all. Nor has it given it up. This has been said a hundred times, but everything in the Prime Universe exists as it did from "The Cage" to the last minute of NEM, then to the destruction of Romulus and Spock Prime's disappearance in ST09. Somewhere in Picard's universe, in what may now be the 25th century, there's probably a memorial to Spock Prime on Vulcan and at Starfleet Academy.

The only way ST09 affected Prime canon was to actually add to it when Romulus was destroyed and Spock went missing.

The Prime Universe is simply in abeyance as a source of entertainment. That's all. If that's upsetting, then the thing to be upset about is the business decision the powers that be made to do that.

Instead, they decided to go back to the TOS days when Roddenberry, Coon, and everyone else were basically making it up as they went along, contradictions and all. TOS had no "rich history" to draw from, and it told some pretty good stories, anyway. Good enough that we still watch and talk about them almost fifty years later.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Trek Prime could come back to crossover with JJ Trek 'Generations' style as shared universe crossovers are so 'in' now. e.g. I can totally see Patrick Stewart coming back as Picard in a prominent role in a movie (especially now hes done with XMen)

maybe something like a BTTF2/Trials&Tribulations (& Terminator Genisys) thing with Quinto Spock zipping across timelines and repairing stuff, interacting with familiar events from the Prime timeline (ENT,TOS,TNG). time travels been done 3 times already in the ST movies (or 4 if you count Generations) but not in the interdimensional BTTF2 type way

It's worth pointing out that the split between "prime" and "nutrek" universes doesn't actually exist as far as Paramount is concerned and anything they're likely to do in the future will probably synergise both universes in ways that fans will jump through all kinds of interesting hoops to explain away. They might even get REALLY creative and go through TNG-R to digitally alter the dialog to replace the word "Vulcan" with "New Vulcan" every time it comes up; truthfully, it wouldn't take much more than that to merge the Prime and Abramsverse continuities into the 24th century as if the split had never existed at all.

 

[Campe]

If that was the plan, don't you think they would have done that with TNG Remastered? Perfect opportunity.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If that was the plan, don't you think they would have done that with TNG Remastered? Perfect opportunity.

They still might, assuming it ever occurred to anyone to even bother. If not TNG-R, I could see them doing this for the TOS movies since only three of them even MENTiON Vulcan.

And again, not a whole lot else would have to be changed for the universes to be merged. All the other inconsistencies are so small and inconsequential that they might as well have been the same all along. For that matter, even the APPEARANCE of the original Vulcan is different enough that the lack of the "New" in "New Vulcan" could be explained away as a convenience.

 

[Mudd]

I have every bit as much right to criticize as you do to praise.

Absolutely. But don't be surprised that when you come into a forum dedicated to a subject that you are roundly shouted down. I'd expect the same if I went into a Voyager, Enterprise or Deep Space Nine forum and started talking shit.

Exactly so. The right to criticize does not imply a right to be taken seriously or found interesting.

 

[Christopher]

As far as Dr. Who's adherence to canon v. Trek's, nuTrek has not violated any canon at all. Nor has it given it up.

Not to mention that the new Doctor Who has taken enormous liberties with the continuity of the old series and is radically different in tone and approach. Even though it's nominally a continuation, it's still a total reinvention. You could say the same for the '96 Paul McGann movie -- which foreshadowed a lot about the current series, including a more romantic Doctor, a more action-driven format, a more Earthbound focus, slicker effects, and orchestral scoring -- and at the time, many fans of the old series hated it for being so different and refused to accept it as a continuation because of its inconsistencies with the old show (ignoring that the old show had enormous inconsistencies within itself).

As I said, even if a new show or film series did bring back the Prime universe, it could never be an exact copy of what TOS or TNG was like. That might work for a fan film, but for a profit-making, big-budget commercial production aimed at a mass audience, it would need to be more modern and fresh in approach. And of course, let's remember how much the purists hated TAS, the movies, TNG, and ENT when they were new, even though they were continuations of the Prime continuity. Indeed, many of them refused to accept them as Prime continuity because of their differences from what those fans expected.

So I guarantee you that if we do get a new Trek series set in the Prime universe, there are going to be fans who refuse to accept that it is set in the Prime universe, or who denounce it for getting the Prime universe totally wrong according to their view of it. "Bringing the Prime universe back" would not satisfy those purists, because nothing new would ever satisfy them. So really, aside from the niceties of continuity geekery, it wouldn't make any difference whether a new production were set in Prime, Abrams, or an entirely new universe. There would still be just as much hostility toward it from those who can't abide change.

 

[Ovation]

What NuFans dismiss as "baggage" is really a rich history in universe that writers can use for story hooks, or just neat details to use as "easter eggs".

How is it that Trek Prime can't come back but Dr. Who managed to hold onto its canon? Sure, Nu Who is a reboot in the sense of its modern style, but it never jettisoned canon, going so far as to bring Sarah Jane Smith back and give her a spinoff series (before Elisabeth Sladen's untimely death). So I don't buy the idea that franchises eventually must buckle under the weight of their collective history.

As far as Dr. Who's adherence to canon v. Trek's, nuTrek has not violated any canon at all. Nor has it given it up. This has been said a hundred times, but everything in the Prime Universe exists as it did from "The Cage" to the last minute of NEM, then to the destruction of Romulus and Spock Prime's disappearance in ST09. Somewhere in Picard's universe, in what may now be the 25th century, there's probably a memorial to Spock Prime on Vulcan and at Starfleet Academy.

The only way ST09 affected Prime canon was to actually add to it when Romulus was destroyed and Spock went missing.

The Prime Universe is simply in abeyance as a source of entertainment. That's all. If that's upsetting, then the thing to be upset about is the business decision the powers that be made to do that.

Instead, they decided to go back to the TOS days when Roddenberry, Coon, and everyone else were basically making it up as they went along, contradictions and all. TOS had no "rich history" to draw from, and it told some pretty good stories, anyway. Good enough that we still watch and talk about them almost fifty years later.

Exactly so.

 

[eyeresist]

You just did (and proved my point again). You want me to "sit down and shut up" because I'm not an unabashed and total fan of NuTrek. Then you cast aspersions on my opinions and myself by calling my experiences "bull****" and accusing me of "projecting" and "hobbyhorsing".

Different people like different things. There's no point screaming and ranting about it. Plenty of people (including me) have issues with NuTrek but they are not a-holes about it. No one tells them to "sit down and shut up".

 

[Phantom]

Take a look at this.

http://www.madmind.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/startreknielsenratingaverage2.jpg

403 Forbidden error

When Berman left and Coto took over, how did the ratings do?

By the time Coto had taken over, Enterprise had already been written off (not that it got all that much support anyways)

What's the trend on DS9 when Berman ignored it?

DS9 never got the push TNG and Voyager got from the studio. It was always in competition with one or the other and they got nearly all the advertising and promotion.

It all continued downward. I'm sorry, but history proves your argument to be a fallacy. I loved DS9 and season 4 of Enterprise as much as the next diehard, but I can't deny what I see. And at the end of the day, Star Trek was a business. They needed viewers so they could get better ad rates so they could make a profit for Paramount. By the end, that just wasn't happening.

1) Ratings =/= quality.

2) Many Coto was never given a realistic chance to show what he could do. He was trying to dig out of the hole Berman put the franchise in and needed at least another season. Buzz was being generated about how he was reviving the show and finally giving us the promised prequel show as opposed to 22nd century Voyager lite.

being a literalist and pedant is not becoming in a conversation

Neither is attributing opinions to people they did not in any way express. In this case, I am generously assuming that "sit down and shut up" is being meant in the LITERAL sense because it would have been rude of you to claim I told you that in another context.

I was addressing a) a common attitude, not a specific post and b) I was speaking to the board, not you or another specific individual. If I were, I would have mentioned you by name.

Clear now?

That's just it: why do you need to protest someone else's opinion?

It's called discussion...that's what we're here for, isn't it? Not all opinions are going to agree.

Assuming you have the same rights I do (which you do) it stands to this:
- Excessive nerd rage is worthy of criticism
- Irrational arguments based on thinly-veiled nostalgia is worthy of criticism
- Quixotic attempts to "protest" the fact that other people like something you don't like is worthy of criticism.

So what are you looking for?
Agreement? I don't.
Comparison of experiences? You haven't bothered to share yours.
Thoughtful discussion? You didn't bother with that either.
Sympathy? You no longer have it.

So my original assessment stands. You don't like NuTrek, and I don't like your negativity.

Now what?

You can always put me on Ignore if you don't care to actually have a discussion instead of an "agree-fest".

 

[fireproof78]

This is actually pretty common in current Internetia. Very few forums are truly interested in having discourse between people who have essentially different opinions.

For the record, such as it is, I have offered, on multiple times, for critics of nuTrek to take it up with me in PM. I promise no hyperbole, no name-calling or insulting, and to have an "actually discussion" as is constantly being clamored for.

Thus far, no one seems interested

This whole conversation right now, reminds me of so some of the endless debates over at TheForce.net/Jedi Council Forums...
OT vs PT...

I'm a bigger fan of the prequels than most, but people actually argue they're better than the originals?

Yes, yes they do.

No, I don't understand it either (beyond the lightsaber battles-those I generally liked, save for Yoda).

^A few.

I think ROTS is at least as good as Jedi, in particular.

Not to derail, but ROTS is too over-crowded for my taste. Too many villains (Dooku, Griveious, Sidious, Separatists and Vader) and not enough substance for me to care if Anakin falls or not.

The novel edge the film experience up a tiny bit but it still sits in 5th place on my Star Wars list.

 

[Phantom]

What NuFans dismiss as "baggage" is really a rich history in universe that writers can use for story hooks, or just neat details to use as "easter eggs".

How is it that Trek Prime can't come back but Dr. Who managed to hold onto its canon? Sure, Nu Who is a reboot in the sense of its modern style, but it never jettisoned canon, going so far as to bring Sarah Jane Smith back and give her a spinoff series (before Elisabeth Sladen's untimely death). So I don't buy the idea that franchises eventually must buckle under the weight of their collective history.

Precisely! You can refresh things like visuals and style and tone (to an extent) w/o compromising the essence of what the property is.

Personally, my thought on that is: Sure, Trek Prime could come back and it might. I'm not holding my breath. It has to be a pretty compelling storyline to do so. History has shown that it would be an unprofitable venture. That might change! I don't know. Nobody does. But considering the number of pitches we've heard about over the years (some actually pitched, some only written) by some pretty compelling writers? Does it really seem likely at this juncture?

The most brilliant pitch needs a receptive studio to get caught.

This whole conversation right now, reminds me of so some of the endless debates over at TheForce.net/Jedi Council Forums...
OT vs PT...

I'm a bigger fan of the prequels than most, but people actually argue they're better than the originals?

That's not so hard to understand. Better fight choreography and a slightly more epic story. They are, of course, delusional if they think that alone makes them better movies, but to each his own.

ROTS in particular had a great deal more than just choreography. The heartbreak of Order 66. The raw, visceral character performances at Mustaphar. The finality of Vader taking his first steps in his support armor.

If that was the plan, don't you think they would have done that with TNG Remastered? Perfect opportunity.

They still might, assuming it ever occurred to anyone to even bother. If not TNG-R, I could see them doing this for the TOS movies since only three of them even MENTiON Vulcan.

And again, not a whole lot else would have to be changed for the universes to be merged. All the other inconsistencies are so small and inconsequential that they might as well have been the same all along. For that matter, even the APPEARANCE of the original Vulcan is different enough that the lack of the "New" in "New Vulcan" could be explained away as a convenience.

If they were to slap Prime fans in the face like that, that would be my "walking point".

I've walked away from reading comics from Marvel and DC because of their crap. I'm only sticking around Galactica fandom hoping that the continuation movie hasn't died with Larson.

 

[fireproof78]

What NuFans dismiss as "baggage" is really a rich history in universe that writers can use for story hooks, or just neat details to use as "easter eggs".

How is it that Trek Prime can't come back but Dr. Who managed to hold onto its canon? Sure, Nu Who is a reboot in the sense of its modern style, but it never jettisoned canon, going so far as to bring Sarah Jane Smith back and give her a spinoff series (before Elisabeth Sladen's untimely death). So I don't buy the idea that franchises eventually must buckle under the weight of their collective history.

Precisely! You can refresh things like visuals and style and tone (to an extent) w/o compromising the essence of what the property is.

Here's the thing: I think that Abrams Trek did keep to the essence of TOS, while adding a more contemporary feel and opening it up to a new audience who might not enjoy it or explore it.

The most brilliant pitch needs a receptive studio to get caught.

CBS needs a demonstration of profitability first.

ROTS in particular had a great deal more than just choreography. The heartbreak of Order 66. The raw, visceral character performances at Mustaphar. The finality of Vader taking his first steps in his support armor.

For me, I didn't buy any of it. I was not convinced that Anakin was good and became bad. He just was kind of ok and decided to be bad.

If that was the plan, don't you think they would have done that with TNG Remastered? Perfect opportunity.

They still might, assuming it ever occurred to anyone to even bother. If not TNG-R, I could see them doing this for the TOS movies since only three of them even MENTiON Vulcan.

And again, not a whole lot else would have to be changed for the universes to be merged. All the other inconsistencies are so small and inconsequential that they might as well have been the same all along. For that matter, even the APPEARANCE of the original Vulcan is different enough that the lack of the "New" in "New Vulcan" could be explained away as a convenience.

If they were to slap Prime fans in the face like that, that would be my "walking point".

I've walked away from reading comics from Marvel and DC because of their crap. I'm only sticking around Galactica fandom hoping that the continuation movie hasn't died with Larson.

Why is that a "slap in the Prime fans face?"

I'm trying to follow, but I'll admit, I'm struggling here. Please take my questions as legitimate curiosity of your point of view.

 

[BillJ]

Precisely! You can refresh things like visuals and style and tone (to an extent) w/o compromising the essence of what the property is.

Which many people believe Abrams did. What you're desperately hanging onto is the minutiae. Bits of information that only exist to serve the story. It really doesn't matter when the Eugenics Wars were fought or when the first warp flight was made.

 

[M'Sharak]

Take a look at this.

403 Forbidden error

I'm getting the same thing. I think this is the chart he was attempting to link, though:

 

[Franklin]

Precisely! You can refresh things like visuals and style and tone (to an extent) w/o compromising the essence of what the property is.

Which many people believe Abrams did. What you're desperately hanging onto is the minutiae. Bits of information that only exist to serve the story. It really doesn't matter when the Eugenics Wars were fought or when the first warp flight was made.

Yep.

But I suppose there are different ideas about what the "essence" of the property is.

Let's also not forget that while a TV show does have to have certain consistencies, hard and fast canon ("history") as some fans see it was a by-product of TOS and something that Roddenberry fell into as fandom grew in the early 1970s "syndication era." While TOS was in production, general consistency was needed, but no one was thinking about building a history, or canon, and if some little thing from a past story had to be contradicted to tell a good new story, then Roddenberry would say, "Do it." Heck, he retconned all over the place with TNG.

In 1966, who the heck would think anyone would care or even notice if "James R. Kirk" becomes "James T. Kirk?" (Little did anyone know.)

The timeline is long, but it's also been so compromised and convoluted over time (no pun intended) that I just don't see how it could be claimed that it's the essence of the entire franchise. Does that mean the timeline must continue to be cultivated and grow or "Star Trek" dies? Heck, even the richest veins of ore finally become tapped out.

For what it's worth, to me, the essence of "Star Trek" is in the characters. Preserve them, be true to what they are, and give them something interesting and entertaining to do, and you'll always have me.

 

[Trekkin]

I do find it funny that nowadays it's the grand and unified 'Prime', when around the time of Enterprise it was all 'it's a new timeline spinning off from First Contact'!

Doctor Who is the absolute worst example you could use for trying to argue it's all one neat 'timeline' that leaves the entire fan base happy.

Now for the overlong Doctor Who part. Skip if no interest in details of Doctor Who


1) Both canon and fanon have attempted to use story devices to weasel out of admitting up to bad continuity (eg. The cracks in time.) Usually this results in...

2) Parallel universes and alternate timelines are very much part of the shows mythos. Serials have taken place in them, characters have been brought back to life with them, and every damn time the Doctor changes the way time is 'meant' to go, he creates one (for eg. Fathers Day , Harriet Jones fate, and The Waters of Mars).

Hell, the Second Doctor and Jamie in The Two Doctors are alternate universe versions of the dead/left characters.

3) Quiet a lot of the writers flat-out didn't care less about continuity, and simply hoped that the audience wouldn't care if they were having a good time.

4) Some of the writers (like Moffat) love connections to the older series...which on occasion a) don't make sense with things that have since been established, b) can be difficult to understand even for Classic fans (some of Classic Who's later Cybermen stories suffered from that severely), and c) they drive some sections of the fanbase absolutely insane.


Fan gushing mode over.

So a long story short - Doctor Who is everything that detractors of the 'soft reboot' concept hate, but a million times worse.

Abrams Trek is a straight sequel ito Unification in a different setting, and completely leaves prior continuity alone. Prime Porthos presumably didn't get transported to God knows where, George Kirk lived a long life, etc.

On the other hand, changing history and going backwards is Doctor Who's modus operandi. Fuck, remember Genesis of the Daleks? Boom! Previous Dalek encounters are now different to what we saw in the show! And for all its impact on future episodes, it might as well not have happened! Take that fixed point!

And I'm saying that as a Doctor Who fan.

 

[Christopher]

I do find it funny that nowadays it's the grand and unified 'Prime', when around the time of Enterprise it was all 'it's a new timeline spinning off from First Contact'!

It was never officially that; some fans just misinterpreted it that way. The creators' intent was always that Enterprise would be the history of the Trek universe we knew, not some separate branch. There wouldn't have been much point in doing it as a prequel otherwise.

But, as I said, there have always been fans who see the inevitable inconsistencies and reinterpretations in any new incarnation of Trek as "proof" that it belongs to a separate reality, even though the previous Trek that they see as a unified whole has equally great inconsistencies within itself already. And there are those who mistake differences in real-world production for in-universe differences -- like those who complained that NX-01's technology was "more advanced" than that of Kirk's ship. It wasn't the ship's technology that was more advanced, it was the technology of the TV producers attempting to represent a future starship. The makers of TOS didn't want the Enterprise to look like it was made with 1960s-vintage technology; that was just the best approximation they could offer of a far-future technology.

Doctor Who is the absolute worst example you could use for trying to argue it's all one neat 'timeline' that leaves the entire fan base happy.
...
3) Quiet a lot of the writers flat-out didn't care less about continuity, and simply hoped that the audience wouldn't care if they were having a good time.

Yup. In the original series, first off, they never expected that the episodes would ever be rerun or remembered years later. Reruns were so unprecedented that on the first occasion when they did rerun a serial, they actually had to justify it by setting it up at the end of the previous episode as a recording that the Doctor was showing his new companion. Not to mention that most of the black-and-white serials were erased by the BBC in the '70s, and many of them are lost to this day. There was just no sense of permanence in television back then, and thus no incentive to remain consistent with past stories.

There was also the fact that the show was aimed largely at children. So it was expected that they would eventually "age out" of being Doctor Who fans and that a new audience would come in, one with no knowledge of the series' history.

On the other hand, changing history and going backwards is Doctor Who's modus operandi. Fuck, remember Genesis of the Daleks? Boom! Previous Dalek encounters are now different to what we saw in the show! And for all its impact on future episodes, it might as well not have happened! Take that fixed point!

I never interpreted "Genesis" as a case of history actually being changed. That was what the Doctor was sent to do, of course, but he ultimately didn't. That was the point -- that he ended up not changing history after all. Any difference in the interpretation of the Daleks was a matter of artistic license and retconning (or Terry Nation just forgetting what he'd done a decade earlier), not an in-universe timeline change.

As a rule, classic Doctor Who wasn't concerned with time paradoxes or changing history or any of the preoccupations of most time-travel fiction. Usually, it just used time travel as a means to deliver the characters to a new setting, no differently than how Star Trek used space travel. Only a few stories in the original series really did anything with the questions of changing history or the creation of paradoxes or weird temporal phenomena. It's only in the modern era, thanks mainly to Steven Moffat, that time travel itself and the paradoxes and causal loops it creates have become a central focus of the show.

 

[Mudd]

What you're desperately hanging onto is the minutiae. Bits of information that only exist to serve the story. It really doesn't matter when the Eugenics Wars were fought or when the first warp flight was made.

Exactly - that stuff is malleable and disposable with no harm at all to the supposed "essence" of the thing (about which essence no one agrees, anyway).

A lot of this angst will probably be resolved by the next reboot giving a little lip-service to Prime "canon" and rearranging the looks of the phasers and stuff enough to let the oldTrek fans declare victory and withdraw from the field. Hell, maybe they'll shrink the Enterprise and change the color of the nacelle caps or something.

 

[Campe]

Take a look at this.

http://www.madmind.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/startreknielsenratingaverage2.jpg

403 Forbidden error

Worked last night. Thanks, M'sharak for posting that.

By the time Coto had taken over, Enterprise had already been written off (not that it got all that much support anyways)

DS9 never got the push TNG and Voyager got from the studio. It was always in competition with one or the other and they got nearly all the advertising and promotion.

1) Ratings =/= quality.

2) Many Coto was never given a realistic chance to show what he could do. He was trying to dig out of the hole Berman put the franchise in and needed at least another season. Buzz was being generated about how he was reviving the show and finally giving us the promised prequel show as opposed to 22nd century Voyager lite.

In theory, I agree with everything you say. But you miss the point. At the end of the day, if a show is not profitable, it will go off the air. Star Trek had 18 years on the air between TNG's first season and Enterprise's last and over that time, there was tremendous audience erosion. Part of that was due to general trends in viewership. Part of that was due to lack of advertising and support. Part of it was probably oversaturation of Trek and the genre. But it really all comes down to one point: People just weren't tuning in at the end.

Only 3.8 million Americans watched the final two episodes of Enterprise. Compare that to "Encounter at Farpoint"'s 15.7 million. That's 76% of the audience that wasn't watching when it was at the beginning. And the trend would have continued downward. You just can't sustain a show like Star Trek with that viewership unless you want ships on strings and cardboard sets.

There are some brilliant shows out there, Firefly for example, that just never found their audiences and were canceled. Why? Because no one was tuning in. That's the cold, hard truth of why a show you love goes off the air. That's why genre movie series are rebooted. Why we're about to get our third Spider-Man in 10 years, why we have our third Superman in 30 and why we're about to get our fifth Batman in about a quarter of a century. Why they're rebooting the Fantastic Four. How many Sherlock Holmes have we seen as of late?

It's a business, my friend.

It's highly unlikely that CBS is not going to return to the Prime universe. For those fans out there who aren't into the reboots, all I can do is feel for them. But, I enjoy the new take. And it's a perfect arrangement for CBS. What they have going for them with the Bad Robot series is a great business deal. They do nothing. They spend no money. They collect a paycheck. Why would they go back to something that they were losing money on?

BUT, to say that the new movies don't follow the ideals of Roddenberry? That's a fallacy. Perhaps rewatching them is in order. Because the action and adventure and a little bit of moralizing is all there. The characters you love are there. There's a different take but they're there. You don't have to like it. I'm totally cool with that. Just making a suggestion.

 

[Mudd]

So much of Roddenberry's output didn't follow the "ideals" that he discovered later in his life that the point is moot. Tens of millions of people don't shell out for movie tickets in order to watch the dramatization of a producer's philosophy and ideals - entertaining is more specific and good storytelling is more complex than that. "Gene's Vision" is the kind of thing that was held dear by the few million fans who held on until the last episode of Enterprise and much less so by the ten million or so viewers who started abandoning Star Trek beginning around 1992.

Ratings charts like the one above put the lie to fannish notions that the eventual decline and failure of oldTrek had anything much to do with variations in quality between the different TV series. As far as "quality," DS9 seems to be the standard of holiness for hardcore Trekkies and it bled viewers as badly as Voyager or Enterprise.