What is Star Trek and its future?

[Warped9]

An X-Files/Twilight Zone like vibe to Trek isn't exactly unknown because over the years we've caught glimpses of it in some episodes. I'm merely suggesting playing up that vibe a few degrees more.

There was a TOS original novel many years ago that had them come across a deserted and derelict space station. Much of the novel read like a haunted house type story and had a genuine creepy vibe to it.

 

[stardream]

An X-Files/Twilight Zone like vibe to Trek isn't exactly unknown because over the years we've caught glimpses of it in some episodes. I'm merely suggesting playing up that vibe a few degrees more.

There was a TOS original novel many years ago that had them come across a deserted and derelict space station. Much of the novel read like a haunted house type story and had a genuine creepy vibe to it.

Do you remember the name of that book by chance? I was thinking about it not long ago and I could not remember the title. I want to read it again.

 

[Warped9]

An X-Files/Twilight Zone like vibe to Trek isn't exactly unknown because over the years we've caught glimpses of it in some episodes. I'm merely suggesting playing up that vibe a few degrees more.

There was a TOS original novel many years ago that had them come across a deserted and derelict space station. Much of the novel read like a haunted house type story and had a genuine creepy vibe to it.

Do you remember the name of that book by chance? I was thinking about it not long ago and I could not remember the title. I want to read it again.

Found it.

Shell Game by Melissa Crandell

While on a routine mission to retrieve a research drone for recycling, the USS Enterprise encounters a Romulan space station adrift within Federation borders. Exploring the lifeless station, the crew finds ghostly apparitions flitting at the edges of sight.

Soon the USS Enterprise is also inexplicably without power. Captain Kirk and his crew must now solve a mystery of the strange apparitions before the starship suffers station's fate.

The situation becomes desperate when a Romulan warship arrives looking for the station, and the Romulan Commander accuses the Federation of treachery. Before Captain Kirk can save the Starship Enterprise from complete destruction, he must avoid becoming drawn into a deadly shell game - a game that will leave no winners and no survivors...

 

[wulfio]

An X-Files/Twilight Zone like vibe to Trek isn't exactly unknown because over the years we've caught glimpses of it in some episodes. I'm merely suggesting playing up that vibe a few degrees more.

Um ya that's exactly what I said.

 

[fireproof78]

Back to the original topic, one aspect of sci-fi's current trend is "darker and grittier." That, to me, is a delicate line to walk, because Trek was always about optimism about humanity and the ability for human to overcome challenges and move past some of the more petty issues that were a part of the culture at the time (racism, nuclear war, among others).

Optimism needs to be at the core of any new Star Trek series. I've seen lots of interesting pitches, and would love to see them developed. Just not 100% certain they would fit in Trek.

In TOS there are indeed some genuine dark moments even by today's standards.

In "The Enemy Within" the evil Kirk's attempted rape of Janice Rand is pretty dark and intense. And yet there was no graphic violence in the depiction. Today you might push a scene like that just a bit further and filmed right (so to speak) it could still come across quite dark and disturbing.

Another chilling scene even without any violence seen whatsoever was in "And The Children Shall Lead" when Kirk and Spock realize they've just beamed two security men out in to space while in warp flight. Those men died instantly and it's damned chilling just to imagine the final thoughts of those men when they materialized in vacuum.

Matt Decker describing his crew calling for help as the planet wrecker is beginning to slice up the planet and Decker, now alone, is helpless to do anything with his ship a broken hulk. It's all in William Windom's performance and the accompanying music that plays with the viewer's imagination and sells the scene.

The transporter accident scene in TMP is another dark and edgy scene.

Those are just off the top of my head.

Dark and edgy doesn't have to be on the graphic level of Game Of Thrones. It's a matter of situation and execution. Alien stands as one of the great SF/horror films and yet you never really see the xenomorph tear someone apart. Light and shadow and sound and staging as well as suggestion is used to great effect, and except for the chest burster scene we see very little graphic violence. The film deftly plays with our imaginations.

I agree with the use of imagination. Personally, I enjoy DS9's Dominion War arc because it doesn't always show the war part of it. There are certainly battles, conflicts and epic space shots, but that isn't what the war was all about. You have Sisko reviewing reports and talking about the casualty rates and how badly Starfleet is suffering.

By the way, I hated the transporter scene in TMP. One of the most unsettling scenes in Star Trek, in my opinion.

If I'm error, I apologize for bringing up an irrelevant argument. However, my reading of Trek's history is an idea of less clothing on the females, especially as emphasized by Theiss.

The difference is that Theiss used to put women in revealing clothing that was meant to be presented as "normal" within the universe. The actresses are asked to spend all of their screentime in those miniskirts and backless dresses. There's not a lot of slack-jawed "male gaze" going on (besides the Orion dancing numbers maybe). When the gels and filters come out, Kirk is falling in love and staring into the actress' eyes, and the camera focuses on closeups. It's pretty old-fashioned. The T&A is there, and if you want to fixate on it, you can, just as much as you can find something to fixate on while watching an otherwise harmless old Gilligan's Island or I Dream of Jeannie episode. But the story doesn't grab you by the collar and scream "HEY GUYS! LOOK AT THIS! FAN-SERVICE!"

The Carol Marcus striptease did just that. It came out of nowhere for no other reason than to give the audience something to gawk at. Pretty much the very definition of exploitation.

I took it a completely different way, and will leave it at that. It did no harm to my viewing of Marcus as a character or the film as a whole.

Beyond that, I really don't know. Is the idea of a woman changing in front of a man so foreign that it doesn't work? I've had friends change in front of me and ask me to turn around as well.

As an aside, I'm not disputing the nature of the scene. Just that it isn't somehow new to Trek. That's it, end of my side of it.

 

[Ubik]

Star Trek TOS was almost never about exploration. Neither was TNG. The whole "seeking out new life" intro is nonsense. That may have been the goal of the crew, but it certainly was never the goal of the show. I can count on, maybe, two hands the number of episodes in both series that were genuine science fictional attempts at exploring something truly alien and different. The rest of the episodes are either action-adventures, or explorations of character choices and ethical dilemmas, or metaphors for contemporary social issues. The fact that they were on a ship was mainly due to requiring a simple format, an efficient and pre-canned narrative structure for each episode, so that random plots can be inserted without too much trouble or foresight. A new Trek show absolutely does NOT have to be on a ship, since, as I said, the first 2 series weren't really about exploration anyway. To be Star Trek, a show needs to do what those shows ACTUALLY did, which is to tell stories that reveal character, or character conflict, or difficult ethical dilemmas, or that comment intelligently on current social or cultural or global issues. The style or setting or structure of the show is largely immaterial.

And since 2015 has very different ethical dilemmas and social issues than 1966 or 1990 did, a new Trek show would, of course, be extremely different, possibly unrecognizable, compared to those earlier shows. As it should be. Also, narrative styles and forms and approaches have changed, as they should have, as all things must. Any show today that tries to replicate what it believes worked in the past is doomed to fail (for evidence of this, refer to Star Trek: Voyager and every Star Trek movie that tried to be the next Wrath of Khan.)

 

[Warped9]

^^ Then I guess the next likely won't be your cup of tea.

 

[wulfio]

Star Trek TOS was almost never about exploration. Neither was TNG. The whole "seeking out new life" intro is nonsense. That may have been the goal of the crew, but it certainly was never the goal of the show. I can count on, maybe, two hands the number of episodes in both series that were genuine science fictional attempts at exploring something truly alien and different. The rest of the episodes are either action-adventures, or explorations of character choices and ethical dilemmas, or metaphors for contemporary social issues. The fact that they were on a ship was mainly due to requiring a simple format, an efficient and pre-canned narrative structure for each episode, so that random plots can be inserted without too much trouble or foresight. A new Trek show absolutely does NOT have to be on a ship, since, as I said, the first 2 series weren't really about exploration anyway. To be Star Trek, a show needs to do what those shows ACTUALLY did, which is to tell stories that reveal character, or character conflict, or difficult ethical dilemmas, or that comment intelligently on current social or cultural or global issues. The style or setting or structure of the show is largely immaterial.

And since 2015 has very different ethical dilemmas and social issues than 1966 or 1990 did, a new Trek show would, of course, be extremely different, possibly unrecognizable, compared to those earlier shows. As it should be. Also, narrative styles and forms and approaches have changed, as they should have, as all things must. Any show today that tries to replicate what it believes worked in the past is doomed to fail (for evidence of this, refer to Star Trek: Voyager and every Star Trek movie that tried to be the next Wrath of Khan.)

I think you missed the point. "going boldly where no man has gone before" was not the mission statement for the narrative of each episode. It was representative of a philosophy for a better future. It means we are more concerned with growth and progress than wealth and power and our petty prejudices.

A new Star Trek would not, or at least should not deviate from that. Because that is what Trek is. The only difference is, there would be a few more episodes dealing with topics on sexual orientation, censorship, etc. However, equality is as relevant today as it was in the 60's.

The only reason it wouldn't resemble trek as we know it is if an executive gets their hands on it that doesn't understand the IP and wants to make it "gritty".

 

[Autistoid]

Star Trek TOS was almost never about exploration. Neither was TNG. The whole "seeking out new life" intro is nonsense. That may have been the goal of the crew, but it certainly was never the goal of the show. I can count on, maybe, two hands the number of episodes in both series that were genuine science fictional attempts at exploring something truly alien and different. The rest of the episodes are either action-adventures, or explorations of character choices and ethical dilemmas, or metaphors for contemporary social issues. The fact that they were on a ship was mainly due to requiring a simple format, an efficient and pre-canned narrative structure for each episode, so that random plots can be inserted without too much trouble or foresight. A new Trek show absolutely does NOT have to be on a ship, since, as I said, the first 2 series weren't really about exploration anyway. To be Star Trek, a show needs to do what those shows ACTUALLY did, which is to tell stories that reveal character, or character conflict, or difficult ethical dilemmas, or that comment intelligently on current social or cultural or global issues. The style or setting or structure of the show is largely immaterial.

And since 2015 has very different ethical dilemmas and social issues than 1966 or 1990 did, a new Trek show would, of course, be extremely different, possibly unrecognizable, compared to those earlier shows. As it should be. Also, narrative styles and forms and approaches have changed, as they should have, as all things must. Any show today that tries to replicate what it believes worked in the past is doomed to fail (for evidence of this, refer to Star Trek: Voyager and every Star Trek movie that tried to be the next Wrath of Khan.)

Thank you for someone actually pointing it out about exploration nonsense.

 

[Tim Walker]

An X-Files/Twilight Zone like vibe to Trek isn't exactly unknown because over the years we've caught glimpses of it in some episodes. I'm merely suggesting playing up that vibe a few degrees more.

There was a TOS original novel many years ago that had them come across a deserted and derelict space station. Much of the novel read like a haunted house type story and had a genuine creepy vibe to it.

I think this general idea is good and potentially fruitful.
Star Trek meets the X-Files/The Twilight Zone/The Outer Limits.

BTW, does anybody recall "Dead Stop" (ENT) ?

 

[Trekkin]

Star Trek meets the X-Files/The Twilight Zone/The Outer Limits.

That sounds like it could be a pitch for 'Harsh Realm'.

 

[JonVP]

Star Trek is a science fiction show. Which means the next series can head in any direction it wants. Success is a combination of many things. But the most important one: it has to connect with today’s audience.

 

[Warped9]

Star Trek is a science fiction show. Which means the next series can head in any direction it wants. Success is a combination of many things. But the most important one: it has to connect with today’s audience.

Which essentially says discussions such as these in this thread are meaningless.

Which comes back to what I've said before. If you want to radically change it then make it wholly original and call it something else because you're willing to sacrifice anything and everything remotely recognizable.

Thank you for someone actually pointing it out about exploration nonsense.

It's not nensense. It's part of the setup and part of what the show is particularly given exploration can mean more than one thing.

 

[stardream]

An X-Files/Twilight Zone like vibe to Trek isn't exactly unknown because over the years we've caught glimpses of it in some episodes. I'm merely suggesting playing up that vibe a few degrees more.

There was a TOS original novel many years ago that had them come across a deserted and derelict space station. Much of the novel read like a haunted house type story and had a genuine creepy vibe to it.

Do you remember the name of that book by chance? I was thinking about it not long ago and I could not remember the title. I want to read it again.

Found it.

Shell Game by Melissa Crandell

While on a routine mission to retrieve a research drone for recycling, the USS Enterprise encounters a Romulan space station adrift within Federation borders. Exploring the lifeless station, the crew finds ghostly apparitions flitting at the edges of sight.

Soon the USS Enterprise is also inexplicably without power. Captain Kirk and his crew must now solve a mystery of the strange apparitions before the starship suffers station's fate.

The situation becomes desperate when a Romulan warship arrives looking for the station, and the Romulan Commander accuses the Federation of treachery. Before Captain Kirk can save the Starship Enterprise from complete destruction, he must avoid becoming drawn into a deadly shell game - a game that will leave no winners and no survivors...

Thank you!!

 

[Warped9]

Do you remember the name of that book by chance? I was thinking about it not long ago and I could not remember the title. I want to read it again.

Found it.

Shell Game by Melissa Crandell

While on a routine mission to retrieve a research drone for recycling, the USS Enterprise encounters a Romulan space station adrift within Federation borders. Exploring the lifeless station, the crew finds ghostly apparitions flitting at the edges of sight.

Soon the USS Enterprise is also inexplicably without power. Captain Kirk and his crew must now solve a mystery of the strange apparitions before the starship suffers station's fate.

The situation becomes desperate when a Romulan warship arrives looking for the station, and the Romulan Commander accuses the Federation of treachery. Before Captain Kirk can save the Starship Enterprise from complete destruction, he must avoid becoming drawn into a deadly shell game - a game that will leave no winners and no survivors...

Thank you!!

You're welcome.

I got out of reading the Trek books quite a ways back. I have only a handful of them left on my bookshelf. Sometimes I think about replacing some of the older books I enjoyed but no longer have copies of (not sure what happened to them). I've perused the odd one since then, but none of them seem to grab me and I focused more exclusively on non Trek SF.

 

[Ubik]

Star Trek is a science fiction show. Which means the next series can head in any direction it wants. Success is a combination of many things. But the most important one: it has to connect with today’s audience.

Which essentially says discussions such as these in this thread are meaningless.

Which comes back to what I've said before. If you want to radically change it then make it wholly original and call it something else because you're willing to sacrifice anything and everything remotely recognizable.

Thank you for someone actually pointing it out about exploration nonsense.

It's not nensense. It's part of the setup and part of what the show is particularly given exploration can mean more than one thing.

Okay, if you mean "exploration" to mean "more than one thing," fine, let it mean "exploring the human condition," which is what Star Trek, and in fact all good science fiction, does. But if you think it means mostly "exploring the unknown," again, I stand by my claim that that was never what Star Trek was about. Every alien culture or people or obstacle they encountered was a metaphor for a very human problem, or a set-up for a very human ethical or personal dilemma. Star Trek was very rarely interested in the realms of Arthur C. Clarke or Greg Bear or Stanislaw Lem, writers genuinely interested in the "alien". Star Trek was almost never hard sf in that sense. It was almost always "soft" sf, interested in commenting on "inner space" rather than "outer space," to steal a popular sentiment from J. G. Ballard.

So, Star Trek, to remain both relevant and good, needs to continue to comment on and explore our contemporary world, in a metaphorical way. We do not live in the contemporary world of the 60's or the 80's, but our own, and the show would need to comment on our own. If the world we currently live in is primarily facing problems related to climate change, dwindling resources, the degradations and inequalities caused by late capitalism, terrorism, religious extremism, government corruption, the sense of a diminishing role for the United States in global affairs, etc, etc, then those are the stories Star Trek needs to tell, metaphorically. Set it on a ship, set it on a station, set it at the end of the Federation, a la Asimov's Foundation, set it on a colony, set it on Earth, doesn't matter. Set it wherever it needs to be set in order to tell the important stories, the ones that really matter. Light-hearted? Gritty? Comical? Tragic? All. Whatever. Whichever each particular story requires to tell that story effectively and truthfully and usefully. Let the content dictate the tone, approach, and setting. Content should come first. Theme comes first. What precisely does this show have to say? What issues does it intend to explore? Let the answers to those questions dictate the tone and setting.

 

[Ubik]

Star Trek TOS was almost never about exploration. Neither was TNG. The whole "seeking out new life" intro is nonsense. That may have been the goal of the crew, but it certainly was never the goal of the show. I can count on, maybe, two hands the number of episodes in both series that were genuine science fictional attempts at exploring something truly alien and different. The rest of the episodes are either action-adventures, or explorations of character choices and ethical dilemmas, or metaphors for contemporary social issues. The fact that they were on a ship was mainly due to requiring a simple format, an efficient and pre-canned narrative structure for each episode, so that random plots can be inserted without too much trouble or foresight. A new Trek show absolutely does NOT have to be on a ship, since, as I said, the first 2 series weren't really about exploration anyway. To be Star Trek, a show needs to do what those shows ACTUALLY did, which is to tell stories that reveal character, or character conflict, or difficult ethical dilemmas, or that comment intelligently on current social or cultural or global issues. The style or setting or structure of the show is largely immaterial.

And since 2015 has very different ethical dilemmas and social issues than 1966 or 1990 did, a new Trek show would, of course, be extremely different, possibly unrecognizable, compared to those earlier shows. As it should be. Also, narrative styles and forms and approaches have changed, as they should have, as all things must. Any show today that tries to replicate what it believes worked in the past is doomed to fail (for evidence of this, refer to Star Trek: Voyager and every Star Trek movie that tried to be the next Wrath of Khan.)

I think you missed the point. "going boldly where no man has gone before" was not the mission statement for the narrative of each episode. It was representative of a philosophy for a better future. It means we are more concerned with growth and progress than wealth and power and our petty prejudices.

A new Star Trek would not, or at least should not deviate from that. Because that is what Trek is. The only difference is, there would be a few more episodes dealing with topics on sexual orientation, censorship, etc. However, equality is as relevant today as it was in the 60's.

The only reason it wouldn't resemble trek as we know it is if an executive gets their hands on it that doesn't understand the IP and wants to make it "gritty".

I will try to unpack your claim: I believe you are saying that the fundamental core of Star Trek, which it must not deviate from, is that it must represent an imagined future that is "better" than our own, a future which believes in "progress" rather than "petty prejudices." Am I getting that right? Okay: what is "better"? A socialist future? A laissez-faire capitalist future? A future run by a massive, benevolent galactic government? Or a future with NO government, because any government is by definition a kind of oppression? In this future, are people allowed to be anything they want to be, any race, sex, species, and can therefore get surgeries and genetic mutations to allow those people to become what they truly want to be? Or do all the people more or less think and act the same, to bring true harmony and peace to the galaxy?

See, the original Roddenberry ideal is incredibly naive and, actually, impossible to represent, because we can never even agree, as a culture, on what exactly "progress" means, or what "better" means. So what would this Star Trek future look like? Who decides what "better" is?

 

[Warped9]

So, Star Trek, to remain both relevant and good, needs to continue to comment on and explore our contemporary world, in a metaphorical way.

Nowhere in this thread do I recall anyone saying otherwise. And the show has always allowed for different kinds of stories from humour to horror to straight action/adventure to social allegory and the freedom to mix them.

See, the original Roddenberry ideal is incredibly naive and, actually, impossible to represent, because we can never even agree, as a culture, on what exactly "progress" means, or what "better" means. So what would this Star Trek future look like? Who decides what "better" is?

This was the beauty of setting the stories on a ship far from Earth. The ship represented a microcosm of supposedly different worlds as opposed to trying to paint exactly what the future Earth looked like. It's why Roddenberry didn't want the ship to return to Earth (during the series) so as to avoid the very situation you remark upon. It allows you the leeway to comment upon differing societies and different philosophies including the political.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Star Trek is an adventure series with forays into action, intrigue, romance, and heavy head-space scifi. What makes Star Trek inherently Star Trek, to me, is a few things:

1) Its flexible format, which has a sort of "anything goes" mentality. An episode where we get stuck in the Matrix with a bunch of cowboys? Go for it! Next week we're accidentally travelling back to the present day to help an alien agent avert WW3.

2) It tackles present day "hot-button" issues (often overstated by fandom), and dives into hip new scifi speculative gobbeldy-gook, helping to lend the stories verisimilitude, but that would be all for naught if it wasn't-

3) Accessible. It has a wide-ranging appeal. It's nothing like watching, say, Tarkovsky's Stalker. It appeals to both the everyman and the academic.

The rest of it is just curtains, paint, and granite countertops IMO. I mean the devil is in the details to an extent, but there's a certain core to things.

 

[Warped9]

While we discuss this I'm mindful of the subject of another thread in this forum regarding CBS' status in regard to producing a new Star Trek series, or not as the case may be.

An advantage with a new Star Trek property is the recognition factor: right off you're going to draw an audience even if merely out of curiosity. The key would then be being able to hold onto them, or at least a sizable chunk of them, and growing it from there.

But I do wonder if it could be easier to develop and launch a non Trek property that could build on some similar ideas yet not be burdened by expectations and preconceptions simply that are associated with something being Trek.