Have you ever given up on a Trek series? If so, what was the last straw for you?

[FredH]

And, honestly, there's no point in doing a new Trek show if you're not going to at least try to put a new spin on it. Now, how far you can tamper with the recipe before you lose more than you gain is always going to be a judgment call, which people of good will can debate, but, again, that doesn't mean you "hate" or "have never watched" the previous versions; it can just mean "we've already done X, so let's trying doing Y this time around."

To be fair, I can certainly empathize with a feeling of “I loved X and miss it so much, I just want more of it, done in the same manner please!”

(I’d very happily watch “new” episodes of TOS [or especially, a post-TMP TOS], or any number of other shows from my youth, if they could magically be created; and I’m very much looking forward to the new Muppet Show special. Same way I really, really wish I could get more Roger Zelazny Amber novels.).

But it would be economically unrealistic, culturally unlikely, and in most cases probably creatively stagnant to do so.

 

[Greg Cox]

To be fair, I can certainly empathize with a feeling of “I loved X and miss it so much, I just want more of it, done in the same manner please!”

(I’d very happily watch “new” episodes of TOS [or especially, a post-TMP TOS], or any number of other shows from my youth, if they could magically be created; and I’m very much looking forward to the new Muppet Show special. Same way I really, really wish I could get more Roger Zelazny Amber novels.).

But it would be economically unrealistic, culturally unlikely, and in most cases probably creatively stagnant to do so.

Oh, yeah, it's absolutely possible to switch things up so much you lose what people liked the first place.

I'll cop to giving up on the short-lived Night Stalker reboot after just one episode because it clearly wasn't the Carl Kolchak I knew and loved. But who knows? If it had built a following, and friends I trusted told who it was great on its own terms, maybe I would have given the reboot a second chance.

As I always say, threading the needle between "Hey, this isn't like the old stuff!" and "Hey, this is just the same old stuff!" is trickier than it looks.

And you're never going to satisfy everyone.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

This is something I continually struggle with is the idea of hostility from writers towards the product they're working on. Imagine being angry and irritated and having to write for something you dislike.

It’s understandable when you consider that the Star Trek that Behr/Moore grew up with had it’s concept redefined by Roddenberry come TNG.

His edict was that Starfleet officers did not argue with each other, while in TOS they quite obviously did and that the world of Star Trek was a utopia, while in TOS it was quite obviously not.

Basically they were given access to a toy box, but only to be told that all the toys worked differently now. I don’t think they hated it, but I can understand how for a writer ‘nobody argues and everything in the world is perfect’ is something that imposes severe limitations on what can be done.