Paramount and WBD in merger discussions

[C.E. Evans]

That doesn't make it less spoiling in abundance of content.

Yup. We got used to new Star Trek content--it doesn't matter if you asked for it or not, or if you wanted just one show instead of five. We got new Trek anyway, and most of us watched it and wanted it to continue. Now the possibility exists that there may be substantially less new Trek content in the future. There are those who don't like that and those that don't mind that. If you're in the latter camp, then there's nothing to complain about as you're likely to get your wish even if Paramount and WBD don't merge, IMO.

 

[JoseNoodles]

I'm not sure abundance and being "spoiled" with a lot of content is a good thing in the long-term or would be sustainable even if Paramount+ was doing amazing.

In general, I think all of the shows have been good entertainment. But I do think there's an argument to be made that Star Trek shouldn't be NCIS or Law & Order, and you can drive the IP into the ground with oversaturation of the market. Concentrating on making one or two good series based around solid concepts is probably a better strategy than just throwing out a constant stream of differing variations of stories within the Star Trek universe.

For example, I think the MCU lost something when they started putting out the Disney+ shows. It made the movies a little less special, and oversaturated the market with content for the IP.

The problem is many studios don't get it. They want to "MCU"-ize every IP that seems even mildly successful.

 

[Lord Garth]

Yup. We got used to new Star Trek content--it doesn't matter if you asked for it or not, or if you wanted just one show instead of five. We got new Trek anyway, and most of us watched it and wanted it to continue. Now the possibility exists that there may be substantially less new Trek content in the future. There are those who don't like that and those that don't mind that. If you're in the latter camp, then there's nothing to complain about as you're likely to get your wish even if Paramount and WBD don't merge, IMO.

Star Trek will always either continue or come back. I didn't, for one second, think Star Trek was totally done in 2005. Likewise for when the plug is eventually pulled on the last Kurtzman Era series standing. Which I don't think will be for a while. Though the people who want it to end must be salivating. They can't wait. You can see it in their posts.

I think we're passed the peak of 2021-2022, but that's as far as I'll go.

 

[Jayson1]

Star Trek will always be with us but whether or not it looks and feels like one thinks a Trek show or movie will feel is not a sure thing. Not that the new thing might not be good in it's own way, but the idea of Trek being something that showcases a better future and explores social commentary might not be part of whatever new thing it becomes.

 

[Ovation]

Star Trek will always be with us but whether or not it looks and feels like one thinks a Trek show or movie will feel is not a sure thing. Not that the new thing might not be good in it's own way, but the idea of Trek being something that showcases a better future and explores social commentary might not be part of whatever new thing it becomes.

Saucer, nacelles, phasers, Starfleet? Any 3 out of 4 of those and it’s Star Trek. Really not any more complicated than that.

 

[fireproof78]

Star Trek will always be with us but whether or not it looks and feels like one thinks a Trek show or movie will feel is not a sure thing. Not that the new thing might not be good in it's own way, but the idea of Trek being something that showcases a better future and explores social commentary might not be part of whatever new thing it becomes.

Subjective.

 

[donners22]

Star Trek will always be with us but whether or not it looks and feels like one thinks a Trek show or movie will feel is not a sure thing. Not that the new thing might not be good in it's own way, but the idea of Trek being something that showcases a better future and explores social commentary might not be part of whatever new thing it becomes.

"They're good stories but there's no messages. I think maybe the messages are what made the older ones so great. When I talk to people about The Next Generation, they tell me they always wonder what the message is. The original always had a message, and there's no message."

- James Doohan, 1991

 

[Jayson1]

I think they had messages. Granted they were in a more broad strokes kind of way. They weren't always complex but they were often well written or clever and when you combine that with the feel good fantasy of a better world then it all worked pretty well IMO. Not to mention some world building with aliens you come to know and of course fun spaceships and even high concept sci-fi elements.

Granted it's not to different really from some bad social commentary on any tv show today. Plenty of shows think they are challenging peoples minds by just sticking in a Trump proxy character or saying all the buzzwords we have heard a million times already on social media. The number of shows that actually really make you think about issues in a real and complex way are more numerous than they use to be but still most tv is still just escapism or bad shows. Granted not a bad thing overall. If a show can be interesting enough to make you feel for the characters then usually that can be seen as a win..

 

[Lord Garth]

No one cares about The Vision until they don't like what Star Trek is putting out, then all they care about is The Vision. (Except for Canon, which suddenly becomes 1,000 times more important in something they don't like, but that's a whole other story... )

TWOK isn't Gene's Vision. DS9 wouldn't have been Gene's Vision. Gene Roddenberry was so upset with TUC that he called his lawyer, two days before he died, to see if he could take legal action to remove parts of the film he didn't approve of. TWOK and DS9, at least, are regarded by hardcore fans as some of the best Star Trek ever.

Gene Roddenberry made a federal case over Kirk shooting the Ceti Eel in TWOK... yet was totally fine with Picard and Riker having to kill the Gigantic "Conspiracy" Bug after Remmick's head exploded. The difference between Early-TNG and TWOK? In Early-TNG, he had power. In TWOK, he didn't. "I don't like that you did XYZ!" wasn't about any vision. It was about him being pissed off that people were working on something he created, he couldn't do a thing to stop it, so he tried to pull a power play wherever he could.

But let's talk about how deep, philosophical, and visionary "The Gamesters of Triskelion" was. An episode that I enjoy, but I'm not going to hold up as something it isn't.

 

[Jayson1]

Well the vision is not exactly what Gene Roddenberry was going for and lot of it was basically built off what fans saw in the shows and he embraced, but it is there. Not everything lines up with it but one thing pretty consistent was a mostly optimistic look at the future. The utopia stuff mostly came from TNG but the optimism was always there. I think it would be a stretch to say Trek has ever been cynical for the most part.

 

[fireproof78]

Well the vision is not exactly what Gene Roddenberry was going for and lot of it was basically built off what fans saw in the shows and he embraced, but it is there. Not everything lines up with it but one thing pretty consistent was a mostly optimistic look at the future. The utopia stuff mostly came from TNG but the optimism was always there. I think it would be a stretch to say Trek has ever been cynical for the most part.

And it still isn't cynical.

Nor can producers be held to an artificial standard imposed by the fans that wasn't present in TOS, when fans are not consistent in their application. Otherwise, as Garth notes, TWOK and DS9 should be tossed out on it's head and told "don't come back." with extreme prejudice.

 

[Jayson1]

And it still isn't cynical.

Nor can producers be held to an artificial standard imposed by the fans that wasn't present in TOS, when fans are not consistent in their application. Otherwise, as Garth notes, TWOK and DS9 should be tossed out on it's head and told "don't come back." with extreme prejudice.

I don't know if it I would use cynical so much as a less idealized look at the future. The utopia stuff is almost all but gone. So has the idea that technology will play a role in making things better. Except for the excuse of making a joke about now eating recycled poop. The world of Trek is more like ours, with more fancy gadgets than before.

It's kind of what DS9 did a little but they never fully went against the utopia stuff so much as saying their was some extra layers to that utopia we didn't see get explored on TNG. The characters even talk more like we do, down to our slang instead of that kid of future speak that I think was really defined by Micheal Pillar when he took over on TNG.

 

[Lord Garth]

The darkest Trek (on a series and season level):
DS9
ENT Season 3
DSC Season 1
PIC Season 1
... and I'm going to assume the S31 TV Movie

Usually, whenever Trek goes dark, there's a huge backlash and it's followed by something that isn't.

Not on this list:
TUC (it wants to be dark, but then it backs off)
Star Trek Into Darkness (it wasn't that dark, the title is misleading)
DSC Season 3 (The Burn happened 120 years before it takes place, so I'm not counting it)
PIC Season 3 (it's just the lighting that's dark! )

 

[fireproof78]

I don't know if it I would use cynical so much as a less idealized look at the future. The utopia stuff is almost all but gone. So has the idea that technology will play a role in making things better. E

Interesting.

I had that experience from Best of Both Worlds forward.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Star Trek Into Darkness (it wasn't that dark, the title is misleading)

Maybe not. i think the "Darkness" was the direction Starfleet was going in because of a certain admiral. Our heroes were fighting against that.

To me, Trek has always maintained its true vision--namely that we will have a future, and that there will be a lot of representation in it. That is something that has carried through in every iteration of Trek. Everything else, a so-called utopia and whatever, that's just sci-fi window-dressing, IMO, and it never really rang totally true anyway. People still lied, stole, and did horrible things in Trek. Perhaps they were rarely motivated by money, but bad people and b.s. were still alive and well in the future....

 

[Citiprime]

The darkest Trek (on a series and season level):
DS9
ENT Season 3
DSC Season 1
PIC Season 1
... and I'm going to assume the S31 TV Movie

Usually, whenever Trek goes dark, there's a huge backlash and it's followed by something that isn't.

Not on this list:
TUC (it wants to be dark, but then it backs off)
Star Trek Into Darkness (it wasn't that dark, the title is misleading)
DSC Season 3 (The Burn happened 120 years before it takes place, so I'm not counting it)
PIC Season 3 (it's just the lighting that's dark! )

I know Deep Space Nine has had the rep as "The Dark Trek Show" since what seems like the day it was announced, but overall I don't think it's justified. It definitely questions a lot of the underlying nature of Roddenberry's vision for Trek, and used the pressures of the Dominion War to play with those ideas to show how the characters and Federation either can or can't hold to those ideas of a humanity that's "evolved" past social faults.

However, in the end, I think the fact DS9 goes there but still shows how the characters and others still believe in the "root beer" validates those ideas instead of engendering cynicism about them. Even with the Federation, the ideals bend and break at points but at the end of the series I never get the feeling they’ve crossed a line from which they’ve accepted those hard choices as the new normal. In that way, I always take DS9 as reaffirming Roddenberry’s values. When Ross and Sisko refuse to share Martok’s bloodwine over the dead Cardassian bodies at the end of the Dominion War, there is a human decency which I think gets to what Roddenberry wanted.

ODO: Am I the only one who's worried that there are still changelings here on Earth?

JOSEPH: Worried? I'm scared to death. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let them change the way I live my life.

SISKO: If the changelings want to destroy what we've built here, they're going to have to do it themselves. We will not do it for them.​

Also, I think there's an argument to be made that Strange New Worlds, even with the Klingon boy bands, is a "darker" show than Deep Space Nine.

 

[Farscape One]

I know Deep Space Nine has had the rep as "The Dark Trek Show" since what seems like the day it was announced, but overall I don't think it's justified. It definitely questions a lot of the underlying nature of Roddenberry's vision for Trek, and used the pressures of the Dominion War to play with those ideas to show how the characters and Federation either can or can't hold to those ideas of a humanity that's "evolved" past social faults.

However, in the end, I think the fact DS9 goes there but still shows how the characters and others still believe in the "root beer" validates those ideas instead of engendering cynicism about them. Even with the Federation, the ideals bend and break at points but at the end of the series I never get the feeling they’ve crossed a line from which they’ve accepted those hard choices as the new normal. In that way, I always take DS9 as reaffirming Roddenberry’s values. When Ross and Sisko refuse to share Martok’s bloodwine over the dead Cardassian bodies at the end of the Dominion War, there is a human decency which I think gets to what Roddenberry wanted.

ODO: Am I the only one who's worried that there are still changelings here on Earth?

JOSEPH: Worried? I'm scared to death. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let them change the way I live my life.

SISKO: If the changelings want to destroy what we've built here, they're going to have to do it themselves. We will not do it for them.​

Also, I think there's an argument to be made that Strange New Worlds, even with the Klingon boy bands, is a "darker" show than Deep Space Nine.

Precisely. DS9 was not a dark show. It balanced the stories and plots between dark and light.

People who call DS9 the darkest show tend to forget that there are dark storylines baked into the franchise itself, beginning with TOS. For example...

"THE ENEMY WITHIN" - acknowledges we need both our dark and good selves to function fully. The dark half is there, but tempered it is a useful and essential part of who we are.

"DAGGER OF THE MIND" - a very well respected psychologist is altering people's minds against their will, and calling it a 'treatment'.

"THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING" - Karidian's daughter was killing everyone who could identify her father as Kodos.

"A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR" - Kirk's solution to save the Hill People is to arm them with exactly what the Villagers were given by the Klingons... to restore that balance of power that was upended by the Klingons.

"THE EMPATH" - the Vians were using people as experiments to see if Gem's people were worthy of saving.


There's more, but this post would go on too long. Citiprime said it best when he said DS9 challenged all the utopian ideals of the Federation. I think a utopia or anything good can be challenged without it seeming like being dark. Otherwise, how can we be sure those ideals actually hold up? High ethics and morals are great, but if they are never challenged, it's just words.

 

[fireproof78]

There's more, but this post would go on too long. Citiprime said it best when he said DS9 challenged all the utopian ideals of the Federation. I think a utopia or anything good can be challenged without it seeming like being dark. Otherwise, how can we be sure those ideals actually hold up? High ethics and morals are great, but if they are never challenged, it's just words.

Exactly. And no new Trek has changed that. It's the same approach.

 

[Lord Garth]

I think there's an argument to be made that Strange New Worlds, even with the Klingon boy bands, is a "darker" show than Deep Space Nine.

I kind of want to see this argument now.

Anyone who does, you can't have it all rely on "Under the Cloak of War".

 

[Lord Garth]

I think lying to the Romulans about the Dominion to plunge them into a war and Starfleet Command turning a blind eye to Section 31 attempting genocide on the Changelings (and very nearly succeeding) puts the level of darkness in the series on a macro scale.

Looking beyond the macro, if we ran through the list of DS9 that are "dark" and compared them to a list of episodes from other series that are "dark", then -- proportionately -- it would come out the most.

I was talking on a series (and season) level. Not an individual episode level. I'm fully aware that TOS had dark episodes, but that's not representative of the entire series, and not what most people think of when they think of TOS.

BTW, I'm surprised "A Taste of Armageddon" wasn't mentioned when Kirk was prepared to use General Order 24 on Eminiar VII.