I work with humans daily. Doesn't change how I find hope.
Could a new Trek show done in the 90's TNG/DS9 style work today?
- Thread starter The Rock
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Well, I can agree with many of your points and I understand your views and your perspective of things
But I still see the 2010's and 2020's as more dystopic.
The 2010's were downright boring, at least when it comes to music, entertainment and such which are necessary to keep sirits up for the people in the Gray Universe as I often call it to distinguish it from the Star Trek Universe where life seems to be more fun and easy.
Then came Covid with all the fear and restrictions and now we also have the war in Ukraine and who knows what it will lead to. We also have the risk of food shortage, energy shortage, raw materials shortage, possible climate change. All of that with risk for panic and political changes we don't want. You are mentioning the Alt-Right, I would like to bring up two other dangers, Communism and radical Islamism (no offense to Muslims as such, only those who support radical Islamism and terrorism, not to mention the rigid policy it stands for when it comes to individual freedom and such).
The problem is that Nazism and everything with that has been totally exposed while people don't seem to see the danger in Communism and radical Islamism supporting terrorism, at least not in certain rosy-eyed countries in Europe where Communist parties are in strong positions in certain parlaments.
And when it comes to entertainment and such which is important in the times we live in, it's worse than ever.
I'm the kind of person who want and need some entertainment to unwind from the harsh realities and today I don't find it. OK, in some sports events and computer games but not when it comes to music, TV series and such.
As for music, there are very few good rock bands left now. When the Stones and Iron Maiden quit, then I'll probably stop listen to music or go to any concerts.
When it comes to TV-series, I used to watch many of them. The recent years I've only watched NCIS. But something happened in the middle of season 18 when the wife to one of the characters died of Covid because the producers thought that "one of them just have to die in Covid". The series became dystopic after that, the atmosphere in the seies changed to the worst, two good characters left and when the main character also left in season 19, I decided to call it a day.
I actually prefer to watch TOS, TNG, DS9 and the three first seasons of Voyager for the umpteenth time than waste my time on all those dystopic series and movies which can be found today.
That's my perspective of the current state of affairs in the world today. I hope that you can see my point even if you don't agree with all of it.
As for DSC and the threads you linked to, I will read the comments and see if I find something which I like.
I think there's two real issues here, one which comes down to bad execution, and one around format.
First, serialization is really, really hard to do right unless you have a concrete plan of not only where you're going, but what you're doing along the way. If you look at the serialized genre shows with the highest regard in the last decade, many of them were based upon an already-established book series (The Expanse, The Magicians, etc.). Basically the book is a rough draft, which allows the showrunners to lift foreshadowing, secondary character arcs, and other elements which a regular show would come up with on the fly. To see the difference in terms of writing quality you need to look no further than Game of Thrones, which had a tremendous quality difference between the first four seasons (cribbed from books) and the last four (largely based upon GRRM's plot outline, but with none of the details penciled in).
Of course, it's possible to do great serialization in the absence of such a "net." Great examples in genre TV are rare, but you can point to examples elsewhere (Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc.) My understanding is a large part of doing it right comes down to not overplotting - keeping the show to a coherent multi-arc structure, but allowing it to change over time if the writers discover (for example) that a breakout secondary character has a lot of writing potential. Unfortunately truly successful serialized TV is often ultimately compromised, as networks start demanding MOAR of a good thing, meaning the original planned narrative is often padded out with extra unneeded seasons. Still, right now Trek wishes it had this issue.
Turning back to Star Trek in particular, I still hold that a fundamental aspect of Trek from TOS through the Berman era is that episodes are about something. Often there's the use of sledgehammer allegorical writing, or a very obvious focus on a secondary character, but it's never really subtle what the message of the episode is. This has not been true with modern Trek for the most part - it avoids the didactic sort of storytelling which was common in earlier Trek. I also think this is why something like The Orville feels more "like Trek" to many people. I think you can do fairly coherent levels of serialization while having individual episodes with their own messages, "issues," and themes, but thus far, they haven't done it in modern Trek.
Its all subjective but I felt the 10's was a very good decade for music. Maybe not whatever counts as popular music these days, but streaming services really matured, independent musicians started to find ways to flourish, and in general i saw a lot of creative things going on across multiple genres. TV's 2nd golden age was still chugging along
And thank God for that.
Why oh why are these always the only two options people seem to think we have? Either an appeal to tradition or to novelty?
Neither a nostalgia fueled fanservice love letter nor a brand new glitzy already dated 21st century version of the future is inherently bad or good.
4 years is almost a decade?
On television. 2005-2017.
The movies of course don't follow the episodic tv formula of old.
The movies of course don't follow the episodic tv formula of old.
That's more than a decade.
Yeah, that's not even kinda-sorta true. So no surprise that no one "remembers it."
To even talk about how people would respond to "90s Trek," the term would need to be better defined than it has been so far in this topic.
So, what are the other options? Because thus far, at least from where I sit, it's pretty much the nostalgia train that is in popular demand. Bring back Picard, Worf, Kirk, Sisko, Archer, etc! That's the best Trek!
I'd rather something new in a fashion to expand the franchise rather than go, "Hey, look at this over here." It's OK to reference the broader history but fully relying on it? Skepticism mode activated.
Sometimes nostalgia is just a side effect of waiting too long for the next chapter of something you enjoy.
Discovery, Lower Decks and Prodigy (aside from a hologram) are all about completely original characters involved in completely original adventures. The fact that they also reference or sometimes feature appearances by beloved older characters does not negate this. Picard and Strange New Worlds are adventures of beloved legacy Trek characters. The fact that they also introduce many completely new main characters does not negate this. As far as I'm concerned there's plenty of room for both new characters, settings, worlds and races and catching up on beloved older characters, settings, worlds and races...and in future Trek shows and movies the beloved older characters they feature may well be some of those only now being introduced. Encounter at Farpoint had a completely new crew on a completely new ship 99 years after Kirk's mission started and introduced a new type of android, new alien races (Betazoids, Bandi, Q, Farpont Entities, Ferengi [mentioned]) with plenty of new tech (like Geordi's VISOR) and effects, and a Klingon Starfleet officer, but it also was still a Federation ship called Enterprise with a recognizable design...it still had humans and Klingons and transporters and phasers and tricorders and Leonard "Bones" McCoy himself made an appearance. Nothing but fan service is empty and new for the sake of new fails to take advantage of the rich deep pre-existing universe in which you've apparently decided to tell your story. I just think dismissing either the nostalgia or the new aspects out of hand is cheating oneself of half the fun.
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I would like to see more character-driven episodes, focusing on storylines and not on virtue signalling and agressive activism. Unfortunatelly, todays writers are basically talentless hacks who are focused more on politics rather than producing quality content..
You're the 2022 version of people furious a white man kissed a black woman in 1968. Congratulations.
When all I see is demands for legacy characters then I don't see how the new is enjoyed. I don't see the fun.
The voice an expert in the field.
"You know, Bele, we're lucky we were on Star Trek in the apolitical 1960s and not now."
"For once we agree, Lokai. I'd hate to think anyone saw our story as anything but meaningful character development."
Can't you see he is white on the right side?
I have a thought. Star Trek is built around travel. It's set on a Starship that is expected to go somewhere every week. In order to have a season long story you have to have an issue big enough to justify flying around the galaxy to solve it. Thus the reliance on Galaxy ending threats. "The Chase" (origin of humanoid life) could have made a scientific season long arc.
But what about Deep Space Nine you ask? It's no coincidence that the only series set on a space station is only series to successfully pull off serialized storytelling. And even DS9 fell back on a Galaxy wide war for it's most serialized bits.
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