Pitfalls the new series should avoid

[The Overlord]

What pitfalls from previous Star Trek series should this series avoid? I have a few suggestions:

1. Pointless characters: This new series should not have pointless characters like Harry Kim or Mayweather, every character should have a purpose and a developed personality.

2. Lackluster villains: Star Trek has a habit of trying to do social commentary and delivering their messages through villains who are just jerks, they have no redeeming traits, but are not menacing in the slightest, like the TNG era Ferengi for example. Either have villains with redeeming traits or if this show wants to do social commentary, have the thing being condemned be presented by a horrifying villain, like how Jessica Jones used Kilgrave to condemn rape culture.

3. Techobabble. This is self explanatory, cut down the technobabble.

Those are my suggestions, what pitfalls would you like this show to avoid?

 

[STEPhon IT]

Probably be best to forget about the whole ensemble cast like TNG and reduce the main cast to 3 or 4 characters, while the rest are dispensable. This will create more time for the main characters, and flesh out stories for them.
The treknobabble was heavy handed on the Berman treks, I hope there's little to none of that crap. But I fear they'll have to comply to the few wannabe BIG BRAINS who have to know how the ship works, as if it's real, just to criticize it when the writers contradict themselves in a story. Or bitch about it in one of the tech threads.

My suggestion, Avoid continuity at all costs; they bring that back and it will spiral the series into a whirlpool of sh*t they won't be able to get out of. It destroys creativity and traps writers into recognizing or making retcons to pigeon hole their ideas. It's just not necessary, like renaming SPACE WARP PROPULSIONS into nacelles.
Allow the new folks to call them space rockets for all I care, what matters is the stories they tell. Not the tech which are MAKE PRETEND. Please writers let that sh*t go.

 

[dmac]

That was my problem with TNG and Voyager as well, it seemed on countless episodes the Captain's value to the ship was contrived, almost secondary. The Bridge looked more like a corporate board room.

Probably be best to forget about the whole ensemble cast like TNG and reduce the main cast to 3 or 4 characters, while the rest are dispensable. This will create more time for the main characters, and flesh out stories for them.

 

[TheFlutteringHorde]

Please, please, PLEASE do not have two characters who have conflicts with one another crash a shuttle into a planet and have to learn the power of friendship to survive long enough for someone to pick them up.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I disagree with reducing the size of the cast. I'd rather have a varied cast of interesting characters with specialized skill sets than have a 'Big three' who do everything. But then they can't just start ignoring characters and leaving them in the background. If you don't want to develop your characters, get rid of them and get some characters you do want to develop.

Yeah, there are some tropes they just need to get rid of. "Trapped in a small space" episodes. Or reductionist characterization, how they sometimes take complex characters and reduce them to one quirk or one insecurity, then every episode focusing on that character revolves around that one insecurity.

I also hope they focus on exploration at the start and at least wait a while before the ship becomes the center of politics for the whole galaxy.

 

[Commander Richard]

- No more "shields down to 30%" with the bridge shaking. Or at least keep it to a minimum and make it truly dire.

- No more exploding consoles unless they take a direct hit with a phaser or something.

 

[stardream]

Please don't dress your female characters in bunny suits or catsuits. I will give it a pass if she is an alien and something about her uniform is part of her heritage (similar to Worf's sash). Seven of Nine and Troi looked so much better in uniforms.

I don't mind alternative time lines or time travel but such events should be extremely rare and they should have consequences. I also don't mind the reset button but once again it should be a RARE event. One time a series is enough.

I agree with no wall paper characters. Have an arc for every main character.

 

[Takeru]

No doctor and no chief engineer, including them will inevitably lead to technobabble at some point when a plot focuses on an engineering or medical problem. Injuries can be treated off screen of by a guest star if really necessary. Engineering should be reduced to voice over cameos "Fix the warp drive" "Working on it, captain!" is all we need, I don't have to see anyone pressing buttons and barking order to Lt. McExtra to reroute the thing flow through the whatever relay.

 

[mos6507]

There's a sweet spot in an ensemble. It can be more than 3-4 but TNG definitely had too many characters, starting with splitting the command role between Picard and Riker rather than having 1st offer fall down to someone like Science Officer, having a Counselor, having a kid, having Worf and Tasha with overlapping roles, plus Guinan the bartender.

There's no way to "avoid continuity at all costs". It's a fictional world. It's gonna have continuity. Whether you set it in prime or a reboot or whatever, it should have some semblance of a writer's bible to enforce. If it's totally blue-sky then it will go off in all directions from episode to episode and that just won't fly in an era of DVRs and endless online dissections.

Retcons happen the most when things aren't properly setup in the first place, so you make sh*t up as you go along, and it doesn't mesh, or you bring in new writers and they don't like what came before so they decide to slap on a new set of paint. It makes sense to plan ahead as much as possible to try to limit the amount of retconning (you'll never prevent all of it).

This does NOT mean that half the dialogue in a given episode should be exposition referring to universe back-story trivia. It does mean when the script says fire phasers that it looks like a phaser beam (unlike the torp mistake in Balance of Terror) or you make sure people call it "dilithium" rather than "lithium" like in Mudd's Women. That kind of stuff these days is just sloppy. Getting the details right doesn't make the story better but it's still part of suspension of disbelief.

 

[BillJ]

Worrying about continuity. Tell entertaining stories, if they conflict with what came before, who cares? The fans can come up with explanations after the fact.

 

[stardream]

No doctor and no chief engineer, including them will inevitably lead to technobabble at some point when a plot focuses on an engineering or medical problem. Injuries can be treated off screen of by a guest star if really necessary. Engineering should be reduced to voice over cameos "Fix the warp drive" "Working on it, captain!" is all we need, I don't have to see anyone pressing buttons and barking order to Lt. McExtra to reroute the thing flow through the whatever relay.

On a related note, how about less of the whole transporters/scanners/warp engines/helm control whatever suddenly stopped working scenario?

 

[dmac]

Does "StarTrek" have too many rules?

 

[STEPhon IT]

Yeah, this just means Star Trek was on too long in the Berman era and the franchise needed a well deserved break. As for the new series I hope they avoid continuing storylines, they can be exhausting. I enjoy binge watching occasionally but not a plotline which can be overwhelming. TOS, TNG, and VOY had it right by having single stories, solve them and on the next adventure.

Avoid wars, they're tiring and not really that interesting if a majority of the cast are spared every week-- OH unless they have contract disputes -- but it also loses the point of Star Trek. It's to boldly go where one has gone before, to seek out new life, and making peace. I can understand the juvenile thirsts for killing people every week, I mean this is why The Walking Dead is so popular, but that's not Star Trek. Star Trek has a philosophy which is above that, of course I don't mind a selection of battles and fighting from time to time, but not a lingering allegory which won't go anyway. Solve the issues and move on.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Does "StarTrek" have too many rules?

I think so, and continuity is the cause of rules which were eventually built on top of each other. Then writers published illustrated books to define rules retroactively so fans will obey it as if it was always there. I can accept what new era production was trying to do and it's fine but when they start rewriting the past so there bogus words are now religion is crossing the line.
Star Trek's rules are simple. The new production should start from there and just go with it and forget about what Berman and Co. has done. It'll save a lot of headaches to write a fun, new adventure.

 

[dbcooper]

Time travel, time travel, temporal cold war.

 

[intrinsical]

For me, the biggest pitfall is the reusing the old TOS/TNG/VOY/ENT formula. That formula was made for an age of television that demanded standalone episodes. Where regardless of what happens in an episode, the characters are reset back to their "default" condition at the start of the next episode.

 

[Mudd]

Don't be boring.

 

[mos6507]

The problem with character arcs, though, and it has happened time and again, is that it's like burning your way through a candle. After you move through the character arc all the way, the character no longer has any reason to exist. Whatever you wanted to "say" through the character has been said, and the show gets stale. So keeping characters in developmental stasis may seem artificial, but it also extends the franchise.

In Trek, we saw this play out with the TOS movies. They had to give Kirk TWO storylines where he was wrestling with aging, TMP and a do-over with TWOK. After the crew settle in with the Enterprise-A they really have no "arc" left to them, which was a big reason why Trek V was a stinker. When it came time to write Trek V, much of the character-based storytelling of the crew (in arc mode) had already been used up. That's when you get "Row, row, row your boat" and Scotty bumping his head. It falls into farce.

So when you embrace arcs, you also have to embrace endings, which franchise owners don't like because it kills their cash-machine. And often-times these endings are unsatisfying (death of Kirk in Generations was, and the ending of Nemesis was also very anti-climactic).

This is true across the board. Look at what's happening to Big Bang Theory. Sitcoms never used to have arcs. Now they do, for the novelty aspect and because everyone else is doing it. And it's great when you're in the middle but as you get towards the end the entire thing starts to feel played out as all of the character movement you setup at series start has already taken place. That's fine in the context of a 90 minute movie--to have a final act or scene to tie everything up. But to have the arc stretched over 9-10 seasons means the last season or two of episodes will have all the characters (simultaneously) at their happily-ever-after state of maturity and inner-peace. This causes problems trying to continue to manufacture conflict as the current episode demands it.

 

[RAMA]

I honestly feel that technobabble hurt the spinoff series as they went along. Most trekkies can handle it, but I think it effectively reduced the audience of moderate to casual fans. Luckily we have a template to work with. The JJ films excised a lot of the unnecessary technobabble and were hugely successful at bringing back the casual audience.

What pitfalls from previous Star Trek series should this series avoid? I have a few suggestions:

1. Pointless characters: This new series should not have pointless characters like Harry Kim or Mayweather, every character should have a purpose and a developed personality.

2. Lackluster villains: Star Trek has a habit of trying to do social commentary and delivering their messages through villains who are just jerks, they have no redeeming traits, but are not menacing in the slightest, like the TNG era Ferengi for example. Either have villains with redeeming traits or if this show wants to do social commentary, have the thing being condemned be presented by a horrifying villain, like how Jessica Jones used Kilgrave to condemn rape culture.

3. Techobabble. This is self explanatory, cut down the technobabble.

Those are my suggestions, what pitfalls would you like this show to avoid?

 

[Takeru]

The problem with character arcs, though, and it has happened time and again, is that it's like burning your way through a candle. After you move through the character arc all the way, the character no longer has any reason to exist. Whatever you wanted to "say" through the character has been said, and the show gets stale. So keeping characters in developmental stasis may seem artificial, but it also extends the franchise.

It extends the franchise but it also leads to characters like Riker who start out REALLY wanting their own command and then end up playing second banana to Picard for 15 years.

So when you embrace arcs, you also have to embrace endings, which franchise owners don't like because it kills their cash-machine.

But everything ends eventually, there's no way around that (except when you're the simpsons apparently) so how is doing arcs different from not doing arcs? An ending on an arc based show doesn't have to come earlier than on a show with no arcs and if the ending is good or bad depends on the quality of the writing and the strength of the characters, not on the number of arcs or lack of them.

This is true across the board. Look at what's happening to Big Bang Theory. Sitcoms never used to have arcs.

Except when Lucy got pregnant and then they had a road trip to Hollywood and stayed there for like half a season, I'd call that arcs and that happened in the 50s!
Cheers also had a heavy arc build around Sam and Diane, it was so integral to the show that there were doubts Cheers would survive after Shelley Long decided to leave.

Now they do, for the novelty aspect and because everyone else is doing it. And it's great when you're in the middle but as you get towards the end the entire thing starts to feel played out as all of the character movement you setup at series start has already taken place.

BBT is in its ninth season, there's a good chance it'd feel played out without arcs as well.