Hello everybody,
Perhaps this is not the right thread and it belongs more in the General Star Trek forum, or the new Star Trek movies forum (if so moderators, please transfer it there if this is the wrong sub forum) but I wanted to talk about the concept of reboots in general in the Star Trek franchise and not any particular incarnation.
A little description of my thoughts; when Enterprise was announced in 2001 or 2002 (not sure when the show was announced and aired) I wasn't so much thinking "Oh they are doing this because the people running the franchise have no idea on how to continue after Deep Space Nine and Voyager." but more "George Lucas has caught a lot of the movie and television watching public's attention with his prequels, now Paramount/Viacom/CBS wants to do the same thing." (there was some rumbling at the time that Braga wanted to do a Star Trek time travel show and that some of that may have found their way into Enterprise in the form of the Temporal Cold War)
And when I first read about Star Trek 2009 my first thought was "They are doing this because Moore has a lot of success with the Battlestar Galactica reboot, now the owners of the franchise want to pursue that direction as well in an attempt to gain some of those numbers" rather than that I had the idea that almost fifty years of material prevented writers from being able to come up with new ideas for stories. Because when the writers had a blank setting to put their ideas on they immediately went back to a lot of elements of the previous movies such as bring back Khan, superweapons, Earth/The Federation under threat etc.
Now I can not deny that the Star Trek franchise did had a lot of material such as characters, species, plot devices, planets, technology, anomalies, etc that may make it sometimes difficult to come up with a fresh new idea and it is then understandable that the people heading the franchise feel that it may be better to get back to the core concepts and ideas of the show.
Especially as bringing back creations from the later series might baffle a new movie goer or television watcher who might only know about the well known elements that have entered mainstream culture.
Instead only a die hard Star Trek fan would recognize it and as a result a movie would only appeal to a limited audience, also limited its commercial success.
BTW, I do think Star Trek has always done better as a television franchise than a movie franchise because the type of stories you can tell in a movie despite the bigger budget has its limits because some of the movie makers intentions is also to draw in people who normally do not watch Star Trek.
Still a reboot also feels like wanting to play it safe, a sort of "Lets just stick to what people know and not bring in things that require a bit more general franchise knowledge."
An opportunity for bringing new watchers on board and trying to appeal to old watchers who have stopped following the franchise because their favorite characters were no longer featuring in stories.
But was a reboot really inevitable? (were writers really that limited because of all the additional creations TNG, DSN, and VGR brought in? I do not really agree on this one)
And will reboots happen again in the future when the people in charge of the franchise feel that for some reason the current series or movies are making it to difficult for new watchers to follow it?
I heard or read a couple of times that potential watchers wondered if they first had to see the Original Series, TNG, DSN etc before they could watch the new movies in order to understand them so it is not as if the existence of those has completely disappeared from the public's general recollection.
Perhaps this is not the right thread and it belongs more in the General Star Trek forum, or the new Star Trek movies forum (if so moderators, please transfer it there if this is the wrong sub forum) but I wanted to talk about the concept of reboots in general in the Star Trek franchise and not any particular incarnation.
A little description of my thoughts; when Enterprise was announced in 2001 or 2002 (not sure when the show was announced and aired) I wasn't so much thinking "Oh they are doing this because the people running the franchise have no idea on how to continue after Deep Space Nine and Voyager." but more "George Lucas has caught a lot of the movie and television watching public's attention with his prequels, now Paramount/Viacom/CBS wants to do the same thing." (there was some rumbling at the time that Braga wanted to do a Star Trek time travel show and that some of that may have found their way into Enterprise in the form of the Temporal Cold War)
And when I first read about Star Trek 2009 my first thought was "They are doing this because Moore has a lot of success with the Battlestar Galactica reboot, now the owners of the franchise want to pursue that direction as well in an attempt to gain some of those numbers" rather than that I had the idea that almost fifty years of material prevented writers from being able to come up with new ideas for stories. Because when the writers had a blank setting to put their ideas on they immediately went back to a lot of elements of the previous movies such as bring back Khan, superweapons, Earth/The Federation under threat etc.
Now I can not deny that the Star Trek franchise did had a lot of material such as characters, species, plot devices, planets, technology, anomalies, etc that may make it sometimes difficult to come up with a fresh new idea and it is then understandable that the people heading the franchise feel that it may be better to get back to the core concepts and ideas of the show.
Especially as bringing back creations from the later series might baffle a new movie goer or television watcher who might only know about the well known elements that have entered mainstream culture.
Instead only a die hard Star Trek fan would recognize it and as a result a movie would only appeal to a limited audience, also limited its commercial success.
BTW, I do think Star Trek has always done better as a television franchise than a movie franchise because the type of stories you can tell in a movie despite the bigger budget has its limits because some of the movie makers intentions is also to draw in people who normally do not watch Star Trek.
Still a reboot also feels like wanting to play it safe, a sort of "Lets just stick to what people know and not bring in things that require a bit more general franchise knowledge."
An opportunity for bringing new watchers on board and trying to appeal to old watchers who have stopped following the franchise because their favorite characters were no longer featuring in stories.
But was a reboot really inevitable? (were writers really that limited because of all the additional creations TNG, DSN, and VGR brought in? I do not really agree on this one)
And will reboots happen again in the future when the people in charge of the franchise feel that for some reason the current series or movies are making it to difficult for new watchers to follow it?
I heard or read a couple of times that potential watchers wondered if they first had to see the Original Series, TNG, DSN etc before they could watch the new movies in order to understand them so it is not as if the existence of those has completely disappeared from the public's general recollection.
