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What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

I think any reboot, even if it was well-received, would suffer by being compared to the original.

I see it with The Orville. I like The Orville and think some of the episodes are really, really good, but every discussion I’ve ever seen online about the show eventually devolves into a comparison to Star Trek and what plot elements were borrowed from which episodes. Whether the Moclans are supposed to be the Klingon stand-ins, or the Krill are a combo of the Bajorans and Cardassians.

Beyond that, I think you would need a justification. What is something you can’t do now that rebooting it would allow you to do? I can’t think of a reason why you couldn’t explore new avenues and new story ideas by just adding on with new characters and new situations within the pre-existing continuity.
 
You could have Christopher Pike having involved encounters with the Gorn, the Romulans, the Ferengi, the Borg, and nobody could say "Boo" about continuity.

Every week people would be on the edge of their seats wondering "Is THIS the week when they KILL EVERYONE?"

You could make an Enterprise that doesn't even have a saucer, it's just one big nacelle. That we won't even call nacelles. We'll call them the Larry System.

Hey, here's an idea: The next Bad Robot movies should be 78 years after the Chris Pine films. Maybe even have a new starship crew (should we still call it the Enterprise?) involved in some sort of local planetary dispute when a stable wormhole is discovered, allowing a lost ship to return from the other side of the galaxy!
 
You could have Christopher Pike having involved encounters with the Gorn, the Romulans, the Ferengi, the Borg, and nobody could say "Boo" about continuity.

Every week people would be on the edge of their seats wondering "Is THIS the week when they KILL EVERYONE?"

You could make an Enterprise that doesn't even have a saucer, it's just one big nacelle. That we won't even call nacelles. We'll call them the Larry System.
Honestly, there's nothing preventing them from doing that right now with Strange New Worlds.

All they would have to do is admit that it's NOT connected to TOS. That it (and by extension Discovery) exist in its own separate continuity not connected to the Prime Timeline. Without getting in to spoilers for season 2, they've already opened the door to alterations, so why not just step through the damn door and acknowledge that this Enterprise and Pike are not the same ones from TOS?
 
In what way? What could be done in a reboot that can't be done now?

100% creative freedom to do whatever they like.

And before anyone says, they already do that, they don’t. They tried with DSC S01 and they’ve been backpedaling ever since.

It is however just my opinion. You are free to disagree. I couldn’t care less.
 
What is something you can’t do now that rebooting it would allow you to do?
Whatever the hell they want. That's the point. So many complaints center around how wrong things look for an era that a full reboot gets rid of that; things become a little more unpredictable, a little more dangerous, a little more willing to explore different worlds and less concerned with getting it right.
 
Whatever the hell they want. That's the point. So many complaints center around how wrong things look for an era that a full reboot gets rid of that; things become a little more unpredictable, a little more dangerous, a little more willing to explore different worlds and less concerned with getting it right.

Yup, this. That big anvil around the franchise’s neck with the word ‘canon’ written on it.

Honestly, there's nothing preventing them from doing that right now with Strange New Worlds.

All they would have to do is admit that it's NOT connected to TOS. That it (and by extension Discovery) exist in its own separate continuity not connected to the Prime Timeline. Without getting in to spoilers for season 2, they've already opened the door to alterations, so why not just step through the damn door and acknowledge that this Enterprise and Pike are not the same ones from TOS?

Fully agreed.
 
Whatever the hell they want. That's the point. So many complaints center around how wrong things look for an era that a full reboot gets rid of that; things become a little more unpredictable, a little more dangerous, a little more willing to explore different worlds and less concerned with getting it right.
I understand that argument and agree in concept.

Where I have an issue is that most of the changes they've attempted, where people have complained, there's no reason they couldn't have explored the same ground but created new characters and new places within the existing continuity.

For example, if you had made the Battle of the Binary Stars between the Kzinti (from TAS) and the Federation, or some new species we've never seen before, instead of the Klingons and the Federation, would it have fundamentally changed anything? If they had decided to explore it and give them all of the religious dogma that T'Kuvma spouts to some new idea for a species, could you not have achieved the same thing and had people excited about expounding on new characters and new ideas?

And I feel the same way about the xenomorph Gorn from Strange New Worlds. They could have achieved the same ends, and left themselves an open runway to go in whatever direction they liked if they had chose to call them ANYTHING else but Gorn.

People talk about doing a TNG jump of 80 years. Well, one of Roddenberry's edicts for TNG was NOT revisiting the same species as before in the initial run. So that's why you got the Ferengi and the Borg, instead of just a different version of the Klingons explored in a different way.
 
Where I have an issue is that most of the changes they've attempted, where people have complained, there's no reason they couldn't have explored the same ground but created new characters and new places within the existing continuity.
That doesn't address all the complaints. You still have the complaints over the look of sets, phasers, uniforms , etc. that would be completely undone by the idea that a reboot means you have no idea what is "supposed to be" at this time in Star Trek.

People talk about doing a TNG jump of 80 years. Well, one of Roddenberry's edicts for TNG was NOT revisiting the same species as before in the initial run. So that's why you got the Ferengi and the Borg, instead of just a different version of the Klingons explored in a different way.
We're too far past that now to make that work. The check list mentality routinely handicaps reception to new things.

And I feel the same way about the xenomorph Gorn from Strange New Worlds. They could have achieved the same ends, and left themselves an open runway to go in whatever direction they liked if they had chose to call them ANYTHING else but Gorn.
Maybe? But then you have the Enterprise problem of aliens like the Suliban or the Denubulans who are not mentioned at all during TOS so it doesn't work perfectly. So, you have the Hertonian lizard people instead of the Gorn and the check list is "Why are they not in TOS or other productions?

could you not have achieved the same thing and had people excited about expounding on new characters and new ideas?
Maybe? We don't know because that's not what was done. There is less willingness to expand upon races because of how it's supposed to be. Star Trek has become a very black/white thinking trap.
 
I'm not interested in seeing more of the TOS Era. When Discovery jumped forward, so did I. I'm not normally a fan of prequels anyway, so I appreciated DSC jumping into The Future. I'm also dead-certain DSC's take on the 23rd Century would've been different from SNW's, had it continued to take place there. SNW is more of a break-off from DSC than a spin-off. SFA and S31 will be the spin-offs.

As far as reboots: I can only fully get behind reboots if I think the new version is better than the previous version.

I like The Batman better than The Dark Knight Trilogy and the Tim Burton movies. (Don't even mention that other director to me! :p)
I like the 2000s Battlestar Galactica better than the 1970s Battlestar Galactica.
I like the 2021 Dune better than the 1984 Dune.
The TV version of The 12 Monkeys is 100 times better than the movie version.

So, it has happened. I have liked reboots better than their predecessors. It just hasn't happened with Star Trek yet.

I think any reboot, even if it was well-received, would suffer by being compared to the original.
My mind compares SNW and the Kelvin Films to TOS whenever I've seen them.
 
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100% creative freedom to do whatever they like.

And before anyone says, they already do that, they don’t. They tried with DSC S01 and they’ve been backpedaling ever since.

It is however just my opinion. You are free to disagree. I couldn’t care less.

That's actually not something they can't do now. However much some fans on the internet think otherwise, there is no continuity police coming to arrest them if they don't kill Pike or say Chekov was never born, etc. The franchise has even contradicted itself lots of times before.

The only extent to which they're shackled to anything is the extent to which they *choose* to be shackled to it. And that won't change at all just because they call something a reboot. Officially taking place in a different timeline absolutely doesn't guarantee that they'll choose to actually do whatever they want and to hell with the history and expectations, etc. It is highly likely a reboot would be just as chained to tradition in most ways as what we already have.

The only way you avoid this is to put someone in charge who genuinely wants to do something different and has the talent and the determination to pull it off. But if you do that, you also don't need anything to be a reboot anyway because that person could do whatever they want to already, anyway. They just have to be willing to ignore the wailing of the internet continuity corps.
 
If we want a reboot free of being bound of canon, how about a full do-over of Enterprise? I'm bored of the mid-23rd century, and Enterprise always had so much promise as a concept, even if the execution was... flawed.
 
About reboots, why not experience every series (if possible) as something "rebooted" and completely new?
As if there hasn't been any Trek before it.
No strings attached.
As I write this I'm guessing there might be few problems with that idea but none come to mind, right now.
 
If we want a reboot free of being bound of canon, how about a full do-over of Enterprise? I'm bored of the mid-23rd century, and Enterprise always had so much promise as a concept, even if the execution was... flawed.
I would welcome that. I would love to start from the "beginning" with Enterprise, set up a fully alternative history as part of Trek, complete with WW3/Eugenic Wars, identifying massive historical events for the common history and build it from there. Then you take the TNG approach and jump ahead 80 or 100 years and explore something else, and so on.

The only way you avoid this is to put someone in charge who genuinely wants to do something different and has the talent and the determination to pull it off. But if you do that, you also don't need anything to be a reboot anyway because that person could do whatever they want to already, anyway. They just have to be willing to ignore the wailing of the internet continuity corps.
While true, I think the reason I lean so hard in to a reboot is because there is greater possibility than the alternate timeline crowd, to check list each Trek entry against the last one. TNG couldn't be Trek because no Kirk/Spock, DS9 is on a station, Enterprise looks too futuristic, Kelvin Enterprise is too big for the era, etc. etc.

The reboot takes away that checklist mentality, other than the hardcore criticisms that will always search for flaws. It might allow the new thing to stand by itself.

Yes, theoretically they should stand alone anyway, but that's not the tendency. So, take it further to do so.
 
I hate reboots. New series on a different ship. Didn't have to be an Enterprise. Use Yorktown. Or something similar. Prequels risk too many continuity errors with nostalgia factor that is diminished by retcons. Push forward, 25th century or 26th century. Fill in later, maybe. Avoid time travel.

More on Preservers, parallel development, AI and implications, etc
 
I hate reboots. New series on a different ship. Didn't have to be an Enterprise. Use Yorktown. Or something similar. Prequels risk too many continuity errors with nostalgia factor that is diminished by retcons. Push forward, 25th century or 26th century. Fill in later, maybe. Avoid time travel.

More on Preservers, parallel development, AI and implications, etc

I liked so much of this, but I bolded and underlined the most important thing. (For me, at least.) COULD NOT agree more with this!

I would be happy if one series did NOT do time travel at all. Even PICARD, a series with only 3 seasons, couldn't stay away from it!!!!!
 
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I would welcome that. I would love to start from the "beginning" with Enterprise, set up a fully alternative history as part of Trek, complete with WW3/Eugenic Wars, identifying massive historical events for the common history and build it from there. Then you take the TNG approach and jump ahead 80 or 100 years and explore something else, and so on.


While true, I think the reason I lean so hard in to a reboot is because there is greater possibility than the alternate timeline crowd, to check list each Trek entry against the last one. TNG couldn't be Trek because no Kirk/Spock, DS9 is on a station, Enterprise looks too futuristic, Kelvin Enterprise is too big for the era, etc. etc.

The reboot takes away that checklist mentality, other than the hardcore criticisms that will always search for flaws. It might allow the new thing to stand by itself.

Yes, theoretically they should stand alone anyway, but that's not the tendency. So, take it further to do so.

I just really don't think it would take away the checklist mentality.

Sure, lots of people claim they wouldn't complain if it were just a reboot. But I don't really believe most of them.

And the creators won't stop thinking about all the famous classic 'Trek' notes that productions traditionally hit no matter whether they're in the same continuity or not. Just look at all the similarities between various reboots of Bond or Batman, etc, etc.
 
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