Is it just me, or is Star Trek going the wrong way?

[CorporalCaptain]

TNG Movies on a tighter shooting schedule. Hard Pass. One good movie out of four isn't exactly the best ratio.

Even if you want to look at TNG two-parters from the TV Series, for every "Best of Both Worlds" there was a "Birthright", "Time's Arrow", and "Descent".

I think you may have missed the point he was making?

 

[Lord Garth]

I think you may have missed the point he was making?

I think so. I think I read it out of context.

 

[Tim Walker]

The current live action shows simply haven't made me care enough about the characters or universe to care about the consequences of what is going on. It is all very bland and unimaginative, from my point-of-view.

Which is deadly to story telling. The story is useless if the viewer/reader loses interest and gives up on it half way through.

 

[BillJ]

Now imagine what the TNG people could have created having had four years to churn out a mere 40 episodes at $8m a pop.

This deserves more likes. TNG was cranking out an episode on average every two weeks for seven years with a yearly budget in the ballpark of Discovery.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Yes. The reality is nuTrek really isn't that much worse than the old stuff. And given how much utter shit there was was back then, the ratio of good to bad is about the same. The problem is back then Star Trek was a farm team. But nuTrek is still that same team with an MLB budget.

 

[dupersuper]

shit episodes like "The Chase" and "Sub Rosa".

I liked The Chase...

 

[fireproof78]

I liked The Case...

Wasn't that a Dixon Hill holodeck episode?

 

[dupersuper]

Wasn't that a Dixon Hill holodeck episode?

Edited!

 

[Steve Roby]

Which is deadly to story telling. The story is useless if the viewer/reader loses interest and gives up on it half way through.

Fortunately, that doesn't happen with the new Trek shows.

I mean, since we're playing the "my subjective opinion is the objective truth" game.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Betazoids are far more powerful telepaths than Vulcans - it's as basic as talking to them, and its woven into every aspect of their society. There's no reason to think that problems that would confound them would be something that Vulcans could better handle. Jones was sent to the Vulcans because they knew more about such problems than humans. That logic would not apply here.

I'm sorry, but I disagree-Elbrun was obviously suffering from being born with full telepathy and no way to filter out all the thoughts of others; he needed to lean how to shut them out. If his people could do nothing better than just have him be locked away, then another telepathic race was needed to help him deal with his telepathy. That he didn't get this help as a child set up what happened to him later (the Ghorusda Disaster, his current telepathic problems, and his needing Gomtuu [Tin Man] to survive afterwards.)

No, a lot of people just don't like how badly written shows like STD are.

Again, we will have to agree to disagree.

 

[SalyutBuran]

I tend to agree. I don't buy in to descriptions of recent Trek as "dark and cynical and pessimistic" because they don't portray humanity as being conflict free and actually struggling. I'm guessing that people just want very simple happy stories with people don't struggle.

You're conflating dark and gritty with dark and nihilistic.

The problem with new trek is that it feels so nihilistic.

Without conflict and struggle you have a boring story, but without a sense of optimism and purpose you don't have star trek. DS9 went slightly off the rails in season 7 but overall they got the concept right. Deal with dark topics and issues, but at the end of the day, the founders were cured of virus, odo introduced human empathy to the founders, cardassia was no longer fascist, bajor was essentially part of the federation, ferengi society was showing rapid social progress, and for the most part there was a sense that all the struggle was worth it. Utopia in fiction should always be shown as a work in progress. Where at the end of the day things work out, but only because of true grit and determination.

NuTrek suffers from game of thrones syndrome, where writers think it's edgy to create a miserable world where no one actually wants to live in it. It's pretty much the anti escapist fiction, which is more or less the polar opposite of what a good sci fi should be. The higher the stakes, the higher the drama the higher the payoff needs to be.

If I don't want to live on the dark dingy ship of the discovery you're doing it wrong.

When I watch DS9 I think what it must be like to goto quarks bar and have a drink with Weyune, I think about what it must be like to meet a shapeshifter. I think about going to bajor and seeing all the religious artifacts.

There's no equivalent of that with nu trek.

 

[SalyutBuran]

Like 1987, for example. Younger fans who started with TNG don't remember that some fans of the original series were really not happy with TNG. It was literally called The Next Generation, and some old fans felt left behind. The new shows are The Next Next Generation. This has all happened before and it will all happen again.

This is a major strawman argument.

Season 1 of TNG was awful. The show later getting popular didn't change the fact that the first season was awful.

It wasn't just old fans hating on it, it's pretty much any casual fan that has ever watched season 1 that hated it.

This premise of "old fans/gatekeepers" isn't based on anything.

Mandalorian, The Expanse, For All Mankind, Black Mirror, and The Orville are all generally well accepted by old star trek fans. Despite having 3 shows going, not any of the new treks can crack the top 5. All 5 of these shows relate to one aspect of trek or another and I don't see anything in nutrek that relates to the brand name.

Ignore the fact that nu trek doesn't feel like canon or even seem like trek in anything other than name, ignore the part that nu treks are alienating a massive proportion of the fanbase with unlikable character arcs, at the end of the day none one of the 3 shows can compete with the current day sci fis.

 

[SalyutBuran]

Utopias are boring shit. Good stories about them are about the folk who defy the ideal order or don't fit in.

How on earth did you watch any star trek pre 2009 if this is your belief?

 

[SalyutBuran]

TOS was unsubtle but making an effort. "We're not going to kill -- today." TNG was, by and large, cowardly, when not actually regressive (Angel One, Code of Honor, etc.). Roddenberry promised David Gerrold they'd do an AIDS allegory with no intention of actually doing it. After he died, when Berman was asked if he could introduce a gay character, he'd say, well, we really need the right story to deal with that issue. He couldn't see it in terms of people, only as a controversial issue they might tiptoe allegorically around in one episode (which is what they did). Hell, a very popular sitcom had a gay character ten years before The Next Generation premiered, and he wasn't just a regular, he was the breakout star. Billy Crystal. But Rick Berman didn't want to go there.

In new Trek, no TOS sledgehammer is required. Gay characters aren't an issue, they're just people. Kind of like real life that way.

The problem with the gay argument is that it long long lost site of whether or not it is a relevant conversation.

At the end of the day the optimism of 90s trek laid out an obvious path where obviously and I mean unbelievably obviously no one in the trek universe cared about human skin color, sexual orientation etc.

At the end of the day, 90s trek had to make money to be made, and it made no sense to piss off the people paying for the thing, just to have a "historic moment". Star Trek isn't suppose to be some edgelord statement against "the man". It's an escape point for people who are already suffering through unpleasant parts of life.

 

[Jinn]

Without conflict and struggle you have a boring story, but without a sense of optimism and purpose you don't have star trek. DS9 went slightly off the rails in season 7 but overall they got the concept right. Deal with dark topics and issues, but at the end of the day, the founders were cured of virus, odo introduced human empathy to the founders, cardassia was no longer fascist, bajor was essentially part of the federation, ferengi society was showing rapid social progress, and for the most part there was a sense that all the struggle was worth it. Utopia in fiction should always be shown as a work in progress. Where at the end of the day things work out, but only because of true grit and determination.

At the end of Discovery season 1 the Klingon War is won and the Federation is saved and the threat to the Mycelial Network (the Charon) was destroyed. In season 2 the evil AI that was going to destroy all of everything was defeated and Burnham learned that her mother was still alive (admittedly more of a personal victory). At the end of season 3 the reason for the collapse of much of galactic society is found out, the Emerald Chain is in ruins and worlds start to rejoin the Federation, like Trill. And even at the end of Picard season 1 the synth world is saved and the synth ban is repealed.

 

[SalyutBuran]

It's funny, in TNG's time it was still very much 42-minute reset and limited character growth. PIC Picard is like classic movie Kirk, the reset button is finally gone and they're allowed to evolve.

IMO TNG is very dated now, like TOS. And it's fans invested in that dated method of storytelling who are struggling with these people suddenly having consequences and making choices that matter beyond the end of the current episode.

Pretty much every character on TNG had major character development. Just because it wasn't plainly obvious didn't mean it didn't happen.

Troi went from being the feelings girl to one of the more important members of the crew, effectively becoming #2.

Worf went through a long ark with his klingon heritage, his son, etc.

Data had endless growth.

Picard was assimilated, had contact with the probe, contact with his brother, was tortured, learned to like kids, learn to deal with wesley, had his thing with various women etc etc.

Riker had his initial babyface phase, his relationship thinger with troi, his relationship with his dad, thomas riker, given multiple chances at captain, etc. His conflict with jellico etc.

Wessley had his path, barclay his, etc.

If you pay attention there was an endless number of things that related to soft serialisation.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Pretty much every character on TNG had major character development. Just because it wasn't plainly obvious didn't mean it didn't happen.

Troi went from being the feelings girl to one of the more important members of the crew, effectively becoming #2.

Worf went through a long ark with his klingon heritage, his son, etc.

Data had endless growth.

Picard was assimilated, had contact with the probe, contact with his brother, was tortured, learned to like kids, learn to deal with wesley, had his thing with various women etc etc.

Riker had his initial babyface phase, his relationship thinger with troi, his relationship with his dad, thomas riker, given multiple chances at captain, etc. His conflict with jellico etc.

Wessley had his path, barclay his, etc.

If you pay attention there was an endless number of things that related to soft serialisation.

"Soft serialisation" = "doesn't really make a difference". Major events happened to everyone, but who was really changed by it? Troi was still one-note "he's/she's/they're hiding something", Worf said "honor" over and over (although he got *some* growth in DS9, which was serialised). Picard got one whole episode (and then later a movie) to get over being assimilated and used against the Federation and after being tortured by Gul Evek it never came up again outside of memes.

You could drop into TNG at any point and figure out the status quo. Picard had more character growth in ten episodes of his own show than in 178 Next Gen episodes and 4 movies.

That's not a knock against Next Gen, that's just how television was versus how it is.

 

[Danja]

The problem with the gay argument is that it long long lost site of whether or not it is a relevant conversation.

At the end of the day the optimism of 90s trek laid out an obvious path where obviously and I mean unbelievably obviously no one in the trek universe cared about human skin color, sexual orientation etc.

At the end of the day, 90s trek had to make money to be made, and it made no sense to piss off the people paying for the thing, just to have a "historic moment". Star Trek isn't suppose to be some edgelord statement against "the man". It's an escape point for people who are already suffering through unpleasant parts of life.

Berman-era Trek died in 2005.

 

[Mudd]

How on earth did you watch any star trek pre 2009 if this is your belief?

Because I was a fan for decades before GR retconned and grafted his nonsense Utopianism onto what had been an idealistc and inspiring series.

There's a difference between the two things. A hopeful and better world is not a Utopia. Utopia is a lie.

Post-Roddenberry, various producers have done their best to offload a lot of the Utopian foolishness - sometimes more successfully than others. Berman and Piller developed the setting of DS9 to get their characters as far from the Federation's "ideal society" as possible; Berman, Piller and Taylor threw Voyager across the galaxy hoping to escape it, and one reason Enterprise was a prequel was putatively the 22nd century's rougher era. And, of course, Uptopianism is next to nonexistent in most of the Trek movies other than being played occasionally for laughs as in First Contact.

 

[Isaac Lawrence]

You're conflating dark and gritty with dark and nihilistic.

The problem with new trek is that it feels so nihilistic.

Without conflict and struggle you have a boring story, but without a sense of optimism and purpose you don't have star trek. DS9 went slightly off the rails in season 7 but overall they got the concept right. Deal with dark topics and issues, but at the end of the day, the founders were cured of virus, odo introduced human empathy to the founders, cardassia was no longer fascist, bajor was essentially part of the federation, ferengi society was showing rapid social progress, and for the most part there was a sense that all the struggle was worth it. Utopia in fiction should always be shown as a work in progress. Where at the end of the day things work out, but only because of true grit and determination.

NuTrek suffers from game of thrones syndrome, where writers think it's edgy to create a miserable world where no one actually wants to live in it. It's pretty much the anti escapist fiction, which is more or less the polar opposite of what a good sci fi should be. The higher the stakes, the higher the drama the higher the payoff needs to be.

If I don't want to live on the dark dingy ship of the discovery you're doing it wrong.

When I watch DS9 I think what it must be like to goto quarks bar and have a drink with Weyune, I think about what it must be like to meet a shapeshifter. I think about going to bajor and seeing all the religious artifacts.

There's no equivalent of that with nu trek.

Do you watch the seasons all the way through or just a couple of episodes here and there?

Because when you say something like this...

Utopia in fiction should always be shown as a work in progress. Where at the end of the day things work out, but only because of true grit and determination.

That's pretty much what happens at the end of every season of Discovery.

This past season it was bookend with the first episode of the season entitled "That Hope Is You, Part 1" and the final episode "That Hope Is You, Part 2," and it was all about hope for the future of the Federation, and literally at the end everything worked out.

That's also pretty much what happened at the end of season one of Picard. Hope for a better tomorrow.

Of course, with Star Trek today they just take an entire season to get there because it's serialized and not episodic. Before with Star Trek they would wrap everything up by the end of the episode, nowadays they do it by the end of season. So they just take their time now.

A different era and a different way of doing things, a different way of telling a story.