Where should Star Trek go next if going forward?
- Thread starter SKTVillain
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I like this. A shoehorn. Same universe and history but nothing referenced as though it could stand on its' own like a separate continuity. A submarined concept franchise could replace it without affecting it one way or the other. There's plenty of room in and out the timeline for such a thing without it being an alternate alternate universe.
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Wasn't what I was meaning, it would be a new universe and history, something called Trek but entirely separate from the Prime Universe. I could appreciate that as a new take on the franchise rather than trying to shoehorn in crap like STD and insisting its canon.
If a reboot was branded as such then they have far more freedom to do something new that won't grate against those like me who are pretty OCD about the canon. So if they decided to do a reboot starting with TOS then they can give us the great Kirk/Spock romance we want, the cybernetically-enhanced Executive Officer Uhura, the crabby old Doctor Leona McCoy (constantly bothered by Psychiatrist Christian Chapel), Andorian Navigator P'Aval ch'Ehkov, Starfighter Commander Hikaru Sulu (with hotshot young pilot Ilia turning his head, much to the chagrin of Kirk's protégé Helmsman Willard Decker), Security Chief Janice Rand, Lieutenant (jg) Montgomery Scott the young engineering genius, Captain's Aide Cadet M'Ress, a fully CGI Arex as Comm/Logistics Officer, and so on, all changes I'd happily embrace as it is able to do its own thing.
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Which is why I lean towards a reboot.
DISCO is fine by me, but I think a reboot would end much of the gnashing of teeth regarding visuals.
Which is one of the main reasons it doesn't work. Commit one way or the other, don't sit on the fence.
And I'm ok with that. Just give me interesting characters and stories. Which, I'm ok with what DISCO has presented thus far.
No one is making anyone watch it. "Bottom of the Barrel" is also a subjective description since people are clearly enjoying both of these franchises still. Star Trek has produced mediocre episodes, terrible films, and just "OK" shows in the past. People have argued about them for years and years and will continue to do so. because entertainment is highly subjective.
And, finally, if Star Trek reaches "bottom" then its cultural significance diminishes and there is no reason for it to continue forward. Star Trek doesn't have any right to continue to exist just because "Star Trek."
And, that's also OK
No one is making anyone watch it. "Bottom of the Barrel" is also a subjective description since people are clearly enjoying both of these franchises still. Star Trek has produced mediocre episodes, terrible films, and just "OK" shows in the past. People have argued about them for years and years and will continue to do so. because entertainment is highly subjective.
And, finally, if Star Trek reaches "bottom" then its cultural significance diminishes and there is no reason for it to continue forward. Star Trek doesn't have any right to continue to exist just because "Star Trek."
And, that's also OK
I personally think, with the obvious exception of the "golden days" of both franchises
(ANH and ESB for Star Wars and TOS, TMP, TWOK, TSFS, TVH for Star Trek)
...we are currently in the absolute best of times of both franchises right now.
Shows what I know though...I'm just an "easy to please fanboy" or whatever.
Or, maybe these franchises were always the sand for us to play with and we should really get our water from something more deep and sustainable.
It's hard to point out anything DIS has done in
it's first season that could be called "culturally significance," what I mean is no statements have really been made.
The closest it came was in the last episode where
the Discovery crew refused to attack the Klingons because of how many Klingon would have been killed. I feel this fails as a statement (we're Starfleet, and we don't kill our enemies?) owing to the alternate course of action was too polly anna to be taken seriously.
What if the Klingon female (name?) had failed, been kill before she spoke, or the small hand device had simply been taken from her?
Burnham's actions in the last episode are basically a second mutiny, so she's given her previous rank back ... huh?
What if the Klingon female (name?) had failed, been kill before she spoke, or the small hand device had simply been taken from her?
Burnham's actions in the last episode are basically a second mutiny, so she's given her previous rank back ... huh?
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Seth MacFarlane?
Seriously, though, different people can get different things out of a franchise, and who are we to criticize if someone finds something worthwhile in consuming this media?
What actually bothers me is that Star Trek may already be boxed in as retrofuturism. It will get increasingly harder to accommodate the older aspects of Trek canon while keeping up with current day reality as the near future seen over 50 years ago diverges with the present. At some point, either they fully embrace that retrofuturism, or in the long term a hard reboot will be unavoidable.
I felt that Burnham's arc was significant in how how she grew and developed and learned to work past her hatred of Klingons. Perhaps not anything wholly deep and original but still there.
Which, brings me back to my point that Star Trek might be reaching that place. And that's OK.
I enjoy DISCO but I'm certainly not going to pretend it hit deep, even if some of the greater themes of self-discovery and working with your enemies despite personal prejudices were appealing to me. But, I also think that ST 09 did the social commentary part very well.
Ask Valenti. I see nothing wrong with DISCO but apparently it is "sand" instead of "water."Seth MacFarlane?
Seriously, though, different people can get different things out of a franchise, and who are we to criticize if someone finds something worthwhile in consuming this media?
This.
For one, Trek's view of the progression of A.I. seems to avoid the idea of automation (think The Ultimate Computer) where in our current reality we're already on the cusp of self-driving cars. A.I. may be strong but other than exceptions like Data, a very passive force. The Borg are meant to demonize the idea of blending A.I. with biology, and yet Elon Musk is already working on neural lace. The augments demonize the idea of eugenics and CRISPR is pointing the way to designer-genes.
Also, Trek's future has us pass through the hellfire of WWIII but it has very little to nothing to say about environmental degradation. Putin and NK aside, the environment is a much more pressing issue, considering that dilithium crystals are still nowhere to be seen.
So what you have is a space navy concept at a time when NASA today is impotent and the best hope for manned space travel is privatization. Exploration, meanwhile, is best done via unmanned probes.
Socially speaking we're at all-time lows as far as the world bifurcating into extreme left and right-wing thought, and never the twain shall meet.
You add all this up and Trek feels like very much a fantasy spawned in the waning days of JFK liberal moonshot idealism. It doesn't really connect with the world we're living in.
Not talking about "social relevance" and more about the predictive nature of SF, you know, speculative fiction rather than pew-pew sciffy.
I don't see how the dots connect between the world as it is today and anything we've seen in the entire Star Trek franchise, either continuity.
Sci-fi used to focus primarily on interplanetary space travel as the main inflection point of human development. This reflected the space-race era.
Instead the big inflection point is going to be A.I., cybernetics, genetic engineering, and ecological collapse. Not that Trek didn't in some way comment on these topics, but it did not make these its central focus.
Data, for instance, is an A.I. fixated on trying to become human on the pretense that humans are fundamentally superior. What we're more likely to see is humans going the other direction, trying to improve our cognition through computers.
It's that secular-humanism at the core of Trek that doesn't really resonate.
The more we reverse-engineer the human condition the more we realize our hardwired biological limitations. For instance, how most jobs that we get paid to do could be replaced with rather unsophisticated A.I. We also see in the political stage how poorly democracy functions in the midst of an growingly ignorant and anti-intellectual culture.
So the world we live in is increasingly cynical about humanity. It becomes harder and harder to adopt the idealism of Picard in this scene, and therefore Trek sort of becomes more of a fantasy, hopelessly out-of-reach.
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