And the property values don't appreciate. It sucks.
Is Trek obsolete?
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
And the property values don't appreciate. It sucks.
Perhaps part of what is on my mind is that Trek has gotten so familiar and perhaps also so crowded. Again I come back to ENT: they basically ditched the UFP and the Prime Directive but kept pretty much everything else.
But also when I read more contemporary SF lit as well as current speculative science and technology I find myself pondering how some of that stuff could be well used in a well told space adventure series or feature film.
Space adventure pretty much (although not absolutely) includes alien life. But starting from scratch I'd lean a little more towards the rare Earth concept. I could see encountering diverse life ranging from microbial to animal, but I wouldn't want Earth type planets and alien civilizations around every corner. Interstellar space could be dirty and dangerous and remote with habitable worlds few and far apart. And some could be habitable only after long periods of terraforming.
And instead of intelligent life freaking everywhere could you have a good space adventure with perhaps no more than two or three races besides us? And preferably not blatantly humanoid aliens.
But also when I read more contemporary SF lit as well as current speculative science and technology I find myself pondering how some of that stuff could be well used in a well told space adventure series or feature film.
Space adventure pretty much (although not absolutely) includes alien life. But starting from scratch I'd lean a little more towards the rare Earth concept. I could see encountering diverse life ranging from microbial to animal, but I wouldn't want Earth type planets and alien civilizations around every corner. Interstellar space could be dirty and dangerous and remote with habitable worlds few and far apart. And some could be habitable only after long periods of terraforming.
And instead of intelligent life freaking everywhere could you have a good space adventure with perhaps no more than two or three races besides us? And preferably not blatantly humanoid aliens.
That's never going to happen. Sure, some people might well end up that way, but people often have good reasons (real or imagined) for maintaining certain divisions... I don't see them going away. And to be honest, I don't like the idea of humanity becoming an undifferentiated mass. (culturally more than racially... I figure if there ever is enough intermarriage to essentially turn humans into one whole 'race', we'll still see enough variation due to cosmetic alteration, gene therapy, cybernetic implants, etc to keep things interesting)
As for losing the humanoid aliens, I'm with you 100%. If Farscape, operating on a far smaller budget, can come up with scads of non-humanoid aliens that look pretty good, there's no reason Paramount couldn't do it too.
But I think that's exactly Warped9's question. There was a time, granted when I was much younger, less jaded, and less knowledgeable, that Star Trek seemed to be truly imagination-expanding - and it has long since ceased to feel that way. So, how could Trek do that? While I found Trek XI entertaining, it made absolutely no attempt in that direction and was really a very predictable buddy movie dressed in Star Trek's clothing, which is why it's unsurprising that it has broad public appeal - that's a tried and true Hollywood formula that no doubt Paramount will stick to as closely as possible for future productions.
So, I probably have to start by saying I, in no way, expect that any of this would ever happen in an actual Trek production. Still, wouldn't it be nice if...
I include these posts as reference, because, along with Dennis' note that Trek is essentially 19th century in philosophy (positivism, belief in progress, defining humans as natural explorers and frontier-challengers), they bring up the 'problem'.
If Trek were to attempt to offer a fresh and imaginative take while still holding true to its defining features we might need something like:
Traditional-
A Ship with a Hierarchy - thus there's a captain and command crew to follow as characters - that goes about exploring.
New-
All or most characters are some sort of cyborg with biological ports and connections to technology that allow mental and/ or emotional interaction with cyberspace. This incorporates what we know about the way technology and humanity is headed. Several philosophers write that we are already cyborgs - from pacemakers to iphones, technology is being folded into human existence both physically and psychologically so that we are no longer simply biological creatures.
Traditional-
There's aliens about that the crew can run into
New-
But the Federation is much less a monolithic entity (thus hopefully circumventing the tiresome colonialism TOS and TNG are so guilty of) and more a cultural confederation - some humans, but not all, involved, many more aliens involved so there's some parity with humans in terms of numbers (they can be as humanoid as necessary for production reasons - I have no problem actually using my imgaination on their physical forms so long as their philosophies could be suitably different). In other words, humanity as more of a 'Greek city-states being founded around the ancient Meditterranean' and less as the 'Roman Empire enforcing a Pax Federatis on an area over which it exerts central control'.
This decentralizing idea could incorporate more of the post-modern, post-Golden Age SF ideas which have become well-established in written SF - not to mention allowing for a far broader range of 'strange new worlds' to encounter. It would also allow for more diversity and dissent within the Federation itself. As Kertimer Jitty points out - the idea that it's possible to achieve this lovely utopia of pure positivity edges into a kind of modernist fascism where everyone Must Play Well With Each Other - or Else!
Imagine, for example, a crew member who is cybernetically linked to another crew member so that, though there are two bodies, they are one character. Or a society that is a collective-hive mind, but that is not presented as evil. Where the crew contains and meets with alien colonies (sometimes sharing worlds or solar systems with human colonies) that have two or three distinct philosophical or social points of view. The show could be structured so that instead of an alien-of-the-week, the crew spends four or five episodes in a solar system or on a planet discovering the unique combinations of peoples and their varying conflicts.
It's not like that much needs to be radically changed, just a few challenging ideas thrown in to at least make Trek feel 20th century rather than 19th century in philosophy.
Is this getting anywhere like what you're thinking of Warped9?
But would it be "Star Trek"?
^^ Fair question. And I think it comes down to definition: what essential elements must be there to make it Star Trek?
- you could take a page from TNG and just really update many of the familiar elements.
- or you could take familiar TOS elements (characters, the ship) and really revamp the whole thing.
- or maybe it's something else.
Anyone familiar with DC's Elseworld issues? They take a familiar character and completely rework it. Sometimes it's interesting and sometimes not. You could keep some or all the familiar characters, a starship named Enterprise and then change everything else. Would it still be Star Trek?
Relating to something someone said upthread. I recently read a book called The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil dealing with his speculations on where we could be going in regards to genetics, nanotechnology and robotics. I found it very interesting and I've previously read SF novels dealing with much of this already (Robert Reed's Sister Alice as well as Wil McCarthy's Collapsium comes immediately to mind). Kurzweil sees the three sciences eventually merging as humanity affects its own evolution by gradually moving from wholly biological to nonbiological life. Our definitions of what machines are would change. He also raises the issues that some may find reason to resist such extensive changes. In the future you could have more than one version of humanity, either coexisting somewhat harmoniously or perhaps in conflict on some levels. This could parallel the idea of old and new humans briefly referenced in GR's adaptation of ST-TMP. New humanity could be more interested in seeking higher collective consciousness and other levels of being while (relatively) old humans grind it out pushing the bounderies on a more familiar corporeal, more materiel existence.
I think this is a different direction of revising Trek rather than the easy way of just depicting another armed conflict with another civilization.
SF writers have taken aspects of Trek and adapted them to their own perspectives. I really liked David Gerrold's Voyage Of The Star Wolf where he incorporated elements he might have liked to have in TNG. Indeed I think TNG would have been better for it to have used more of Gerrold's ideas. Another one was Canadian SF writer Robert Sawyer's novel Starplex which was something of a merging of TNG elements and parts of DS9. After reading Starplex I couldn't help but think that it would have made a terrific TNG story.
Two instances of how ideas were handled in TNG spring to mind. In TNG's 2nd season we had "Up The Long Ladder" dealing with cloning. The approach to cloning there was flawed in some respects and didn't reflect what was already known about cloning even then. And note that SF has been dealing with cloning since the '70s at least. Another idea were the nanites in 3rd season. They treated it as if it were a wholly new science and technology yet nanotech is something that by all reason should have been commonplace long before the 24th century even if it hadn't already been discussed in previous series or films. The only new element should have been the one dealing with a collective intelligence.
Inspired by the aforementioned works and others I am also trying to cobble together something of my own that builds on some of Star Trek's ideas although filtered through my own perspective. And I'm trying to incorporate some of the more recent ideas from current SF and real world speculative science. My basic approach is that I want to tell certain kinds of stories and trying to fashion a reasonably credible setting for those stories to take place. It probably isn't much more credible than Star Trek, but it does build on what we've learned in the past decades in the sciences and technology. If nothing else what I like about my approach is that it really embraces the idea of a distant and potentially dangerous "final frontier." Interstellar space is vast and there are no galactic governments. Alien intelligence has yet to be encountered. It's more of a rare Earth perspective although there are human colonies on a few terraformed worlds. Finally it's set much further in the future. My first take on this was very Trek like as one tends to stick close to what one knows until gaining confidence in one's own ideas. What I realized was that it is something of a sensibility that I was trying to recapture rather than specific ideas and that allowed me to move beyond the more immediately familiar depictions.
By remixing the formula you find yourself able to tell other kinds of stories even if you can't tell more familiar stories in quite the same way.
There's another aspect. In Trek what is the real rationale for exploring deep space? Is it strictly an endeavour born of some noble pursuit for its own sake? This really isn't addressed directly. As I see it deep space exploration depends greatly on the technology and engineering becoming much more affordable and there has to be a rationale for it: what are you looking for? In SF we can gloss over the scientific and technological aspects but to be really credible those things have to be relatively easy for a civilization to seriously contemplate such an undertaking. I'd say your society as a whole also has to be of a certain mindset.
- you could take a page from TNG and just really update many of the familiar elements.
- or you could take familiar TOS elements (characters, the ship) and really revamp the whole thing.
- or maybe it's something else.
Anyone familiar with DC's Elseworld issues? They take a familiar character and completely rework it. Sometimes it's interesting and sometimes not. You could keep some or all the familiar characters, a starship named Enterprise and then change everything else. Would it still be Star Trek?
Relating to something someone said upthread. I recently read a book called The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil dealing with his speculations on where we could be going in regards to genetics, nanotechnology and robotics. I found it very interesting and I've previously read SF novels dealing with much of this already (Robert Reed's Sister Alice as well as Wil McCarthy's Collapsium comes immediately to mind). Kurzweil sees the three sciences eventually merging as humanity affects its own evolution by gradually moving from wholly biological to nonbiological life. Our definitions of what machines are would change. He also raises the issues that some may find reason to resist such extensive changes. In the future you could have more than one version of humanity, either coexisting somewhat harmoniously or perhaps in conflict on some levels. This could parallel the idea of old and new humans briefly referenced in GR's adaptation of ST-TMP. New humanity could be more interested in seeking higher collective consciousness and other levels of being while (relatively) old humans grind it out pushing the bounderies on a more familiar corporeal, more materiel existence.
I think this is a different direction of revising Trek rather than the easy way of just depicting another armed conflict with another civilization.
SF writers have taken aspects of Trek and adapted them to their own perspectives. I really liked David Gerrold's Voyage Of The Star Wolf where he incorporated elements he might have liked to have in TNG. Indeed I think TNG would have been better for it to have used more of Gerrold's ideas. Another one was Canadian SF writer Robert Sawyer's novel Starplex which was something of a merging of TNG elements and parts of DS9. After reading Starplex I couldn't help but think that it would have made a terrific TNG story.
Two instances of how ideas were handled in TNG spring to mind. In TNG's 2nd season we had "Up The Long Ladder" dealing with cloning. The approach to cloning there was flawed in some respects and didn't reflect what was already known about cloning even then. And note that SF has been dealing with cloning since the '70s at least. Another idea were the nanites in 3rd season. They treated it as if it were a wholly new science and technology yet nanotech is something that by all reason should have been commonplace long before the 24th century even if it hadn't already been discussed in previous series or films. The only new element should have been the one dealing with a collective intelligence.
Inspired by the aforementioned works and others I am also trying to cobble together something of my own that builds on some of Star Trek's ideas although filtered through my own perspective. And I'm trying to incorporate some of the more recent ideas from current SF and real world speculative science. My basic approach is that I want to tell certain kinds of stories and trying to fashion a reasonably credible setting for those stories to take place. It probably isn't much more credible than Star Trek, but it does build on what we've learned in the past decades in the sciences and technology. If nothing else what I like about my approach is that it really embraces the idea of a distant and potentially dangerous "final frontier." Interstellar space is vast and there are no galactic governments. Alien intelligence has yet to be encountered. It's more of a rare Earth perspective although there are human colonies on a few terraformed worlds. Finally it's set much further in the future. My first take on this was very Trek like as one tends to stick close to what one knows until gaining confidence in one's own ideas. What I realized was that it is something of a sensibility that I was trying to recapture rather than specific ideas and that allowed me to move beyond the more immediately familiar depictions.
By remixing the formula you find yourself able to tell other kinds of stories even if you can't tell more familiar stories in quite the same way.
There's another aspect. In Trek what is the real rationale for exploring deep space? Is it strictly an endeavour born of some noble pursuit for its own sake? This really isn't addressed directly. As I see it deep space exploration depends greatly on the technology and engineering becoming much more affordable and there has to be a rationale for it: what are you looking for? In SF we can gloss over the scientific and technological aspects but to be really credible those things have to be relatively easy for a civilization to seriously contemplate such an undertaking. I'd say your society as a whole also has to be of a certain mindset.
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Quite true of Star Trek's scientific and technological perspectives. Another aspect of the problem I think is that the spin offs' social, political, economic and cultural perspectives are not only uniformly conventional, but increasingly insist that nothing really changes. Living memory tells us our contemporary world is different from fifty years ago. The notion it will be like Fifties sitcoms (apparently the viewing the shaped the worldview of the average Hollywood producer!) is nuts. The situation is so bad that that the spinoffs are not even very reflective of the contemporary.
Tarzan was never plausible or mature, and it is doubtful that it was ever meant to be. And it's obsolete because we see Africa on TV screens with massive cities and crowded refugee camps and marauding soldiers, not vast unknown jungles. Star Trek is not obsolete in that sense, and won't be until the twenty second century. Every projection of the future is impossible. Nor is it genuine speculation.
That's been true since Twenty Thousands Leagues Beneath the Sea. Verne didn't think that Captain Nemo was "plausible," even if he (correctly) thought the Nautilus was. Advances in submarine technology and oceanography didn't turn the novel from science fiction into fantasy. If tomorrow we discovered a tribe of talking apes who had cunningly hidden themselves from humanity, Tarzan would not suddenly turn into mature fiction. Tarzan was never good science, even when it was written. But the science being dumb, or mistaken, or outdated, or an unlikely possibility, or flat out fictional is not what makes something fantasy. That just makes it bad science fiction. Dr. Doolittle is fantasy, not Tarzan. The technological obsolenscence of the Nautilus does not make Nemo immature.
This nonsense about the "realm of fantasy" is just a way of lowing critical standards. Bad science in science fiction is bad style. Dismissing all of it as mere fantasy is a way of excusing bad style. Generally, labeling it all fantasy is covertly saying that it's all nonsens, therefore standards don't apply. I think of it as Spielberg's Law.
The computer talking in Star Trek was something futuristic. Our experience of computers now shows the spinoffs to be stuck in the past, despite being set in the future. Such a jarring dissonance is bad style. Imagining something different is remarkably hard to do. As to why the proprietors of the Star Trek name don't notice this? My guess is that on one level they are not much engaged with the real world. Also, imagining something new is hard work. Imagining something new and superficially plausible demands actually knowing things besides what's cool. Worse, the semiliterate hatred of big words (aka technobabble) makes actual sense actively offensive to some people. Worst of all, writing exposition is hard.
The apparent equation of imperialism with smugness and overbearingness is extraordinary. I'm pretty sure that real empires have something to do with conquering and exploiting. The spinoffs don't even show that for the Klingon Empire.
But on the general issue of the Federation, years of spinoffs have revealed accumulating glimpses of (suprise!) our contemporary society, which is decidedly imperfect. On the one hand, the spinoffs do not deal with contemporary issues well. Being set in the future, they can't depict the social context. On the other hand, talking about contemporary society by dramatizing "possible" consequences of our choices now, which is exactly how science fiction can offer a perspective realist fiction and drama can't, is pretty much impossible for the spinoffs, because they falsely assert that nothing changes.
The idea that the fight against the Kaiser was part of Star Trek is just plain nuts. Colonialism was no more the past than the Cold War when Star Trek was broadcast. Space Nazis may have appeared in Star Trek but they were just window dressing in an episode about colonialism. The spinoffs are much more about WWII.
The assertion that all of this "works" is mistaken. Increasingly, the out of dateness of the Star Trek spinoffs doesn't work. Unless, of course, you are resolutely facing backward.
Space war wasn't a major underpinning of Star Trek. It was for the spinoffs. Obviously, it wasn't a "conceptual underpinning." Settlements have mostly been dropped in the spinoffs, so that too wasn't a "conceptual underpinning." What's left is pretty much stories centered upon a ship of some sort traveling to other stars. FTL has long been a misnomer tolerated for convenience. The whole point of "warp" is that the ship doesn't actually get accelerated faster than light, which sure enough is impossible. Genuine FTL pretty much went out with Doc Smith. The science that justified this was fictional, which is quite good enough for science fiction (and isn't fantasy.) Now, when we actually have blue sky speculations about real warp drives, the thinness of the fiction is apparent. Doesn't turn it into fantasy. Further, further fictional science that devises travel to other stars is possible. We even have reasons to believe (dark matter and dark energy) that there might be radical changes in our understanding of the universe.
Sure, modern understanding of DNA biochemistry makes it really clear, even to laymen who have only the simplest basics, exactly how unlikely human-like aliens would be. Bad science doesn't make something fantasy. It just makes it bad science fiction.
Star Trek came from the Sixties, which is when The Lord of the Rings becames popular in the US. That's modern fantasy! Aliens, humanoid or not, just aren't the same thing as orcs and ents. Humanoid aliens were not good in Star Trek, and they are worse and worse as time goes on. One reason for the bad was cheap production values. But, why does the new movie have humanoid aliens? Dismissing everything as fantasy is a way of forbidding such inconvenient questions.
The naval vessel trope is inspired by history. The likelihood that history would repeat itself so closely is unlikely in the extreme. But how many episodes of Star Trek were really disguised episodes from romances about Cook or Bligh or Columbus? The thing that makes Star Trek different is Spock. Now you can talk about the nonsense of hybridization (and it bothered me when the show was first broadcast!) But the different perspective dramatized by Spock (someone smarter and better doesn't want to be like us!?!?) makes Star Trek nothing like boys' own adventures of the King's Navy. Someone who can't see something so obvious shouldn't sneer at people for childishness.
Someone may not be able to distinguish good science fiction from bad science fiction, since that involves knowing something about science and fiction. But the plausibility test not only fails to distinguish science fiction from fantasy, it fails to distinguish fantasy from realism. If Star Trek and Tarzan are fantasy, then Sherlock Holmes and James Bond are fantasy. Why, Gone with the Wind is an Oscar winning fantasy! Every TV cop show is a fantasy. Labeling everything a fantasy to justify the obsolescence of the Trek spinoffs and the remake is the absurdity.
Science fiction with bad science that still takes itself seriously is about as unsophisticated as you can get, for a start. As far as imagination goes, it is shocking, but reality is still richer than most people's imagination. And real science is far more likely to provoke interest. Compare 1984 with Brave New World. But it's unimaginative technology makes it irrelevant. It's only ground into teenagers because it's politically correct (in the sense of an opinion that suits the powerful, not in the morally outraged over being looked down on for being bigoted sense.) Brave New World is much more grounded, even though we know the future just isn't going to be like that, and it is still relevant precisely because it is better grounded. Attacking science in science fiction is a recipe for failure of imagination. More likely what's wanted is sensationalism.
The spinoffs have already changed Star Trek, so there is no question of staying true. Spock didn't want to be human, but Data did. Star Trek thought there was a place for Kirk alongside the rational Vulcan Spock, but Enterprise thought the Vulcans were rationalizers, not reasoners, and T'Pol's place was under Archer. Star Trek thought space war was wrong. DS9 thought it was inevitable (which magnifies the error of thinking it was even possible!) and winning is everything. So on and so forth. Star Trek's military hierarchy flagrantly contradicted common experience of the WWII military but the spinoffs adore Klingons. Like all science fiction, Star Trek is always about now. If we're lucky it might say something about where we're going now. But the now of Star Trek is gone, and there's no staying true.
The remarks quoted above about how Star Trek ripped off pulp fiction were cheap shots. The ideas may have been old in the pulps but they sure weren't old on TV. (TV is rarely avant garde anyhow. Westerns were still big on TV when Star Trek came on air!) As I understand it, importing ideas onto TV was one of the secrets of Dr. Who as well. The thing is that the spinoffs don't generally import new ideas (Voyager was most likely too, but it is detested by the true fans, so that doesn't count.) The same old stuff, particularly when we've had a chance to think about it and realize it's nonsense, just isn't very entertaining.
As for the future of the Star Trek remake, calling it a buddy movie is very generous. It's a failed buddy movie. It has zero interest other than Kirk/Spock, but Kirk/Spock only come into existence because Leonard Nimoy tells them to become friends. This is nonsense of a different sort than the idiotic science that litters so much science fiction. It's worse, because someone can just say it's all fantasy and just ignore the stupid. But becoming friends because it's destiny is just dishonest.
Yes, Star Trek is obsolete. Trek could be modernize but the remake is already obsolete.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment of Trek XI isn't that it doesn't truly reflect and resonate with the essence of TOS, but that as a reboot it didn't make any real effort to freshen the concepts. Instead it went into dumbing down mode. And this may well be the face of Star Trek for the next while to come.
But lets not get off track too much. There are plenty of other threads to discuss the recent movie.
But lets not get off track too much. There are plenty of other threads to discuss the recent movie.
I think the interesting thing that I keep thinking about in this thread is the idea of exploring the unknown. To be perfectly honest, even in 60s Trek, they didn't explore the unknown all that often (in the sense that they went out to the beyond and found things that surprised them). I think a greater percentage of episodes were devoted to this than in later Trek, but it wasn't entirely their theme. And that's fine, you can make a compelling drama or action episode set in a science fiction background without doing that. But the actual search for the unknown I think inspires a lot of space exploration and Star Trek is often more about using science fiction as an allegory for ourselves today. I wonder if the search for the unknown idea would still be popular.
They've even mentioned that in the show a few times, Sisko told the Prophets that they explored themselves and their own lives as much as they explored everything else. Q told Picard in All Good Things that the true exploration that awaited them was exploring the nature of existence itself and not just space travel.
Just because something is successful doesn't mean it isn't obselete. STXI may have made a lot of money, yes, it may have been the most fun I've had watching Star Trek, yes, but it's still really rather anachronistic.
Star Trek did take a page from the pulps. It's been well acknowledged and documented.
"The Man Trap" writer George Clayton Johnson, in a July 1996 Cinefantastique interview, said the series carries an "unacknowledged" debt to Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future stories. He compared Captain Future, Curt Newton, to James T. Kirk. Spock was a combination of Future's two assistants: Grag, a metal robot, and Otho, a man-made synthetic being.
Of course, I find it interesting that Johnson credits TOS with making SF accessible to mainstream viewers. We've come full circle in that this new movie has succeeded in making Trek accessible to mainstream viewers, but that's a digression.
Herb Solow and Robert H. Justaman's book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story further elaborates on this culling from the pulps.
Things that appeared in Star Trek had already appeared on television. Westerns may have been more popular but space adventure wasn't alien, pun intended, to 50s or 60s audiences. Spaceships, space travelers, strange worlds, and aliens. Those concepts were as old as the Westerns themselves, but they hadn't been done much for adults and certainly it didn't relate to the average television viewer. What Roddenberry did, and did great, was to take those things and give them a basis in our reality. He put them into naval terms.
While Roddenberry changed the audience frame of reference to something a bit more understandable, he still looked at the pulps for ideas on how to visualize his new world.
On pg. 25, the cover of Future Science Fiction is shown with an illustration of a girl wearing an outfit similar to France Nuyen's costume in "Elann of Troyus." The caption stating that Thesis got his inspiration from the pulps too.
Trek is a sort of pulp science-fiction in its own right. Certainly, it's own subgenre of science fiction with its peculiar set of rules and tropes.
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No worse than Pan-Am in 2001.
Anachronism and obsolescence are not corollary. One involves time, the other involves usefulness.
The purpose of Trek is to make money, entertain and sometimes to make the viewer ponder questions of morality and life, in that order. Without the first there is no Star Trek for anyone, without the second there is no one watching and therefore no Star Trek for anyone, and without sometimes the third, it would be just another silly 60s action show.
It continues to do all three of these, therefore, by definition, it is not obsolete. Things like spaceships and laser guns and the lack of modern day scientific conventions may make Trek anachronistic but they do not render it useless.
Yes. I thought I made that clear, though the details offered are interesting. But the important thing in this context is that the sf ideas Star Trek took from the pulps were new to television.
Judging from many, many posts in this bbs, the "true fans" are the ones who appreciate Star Trek and the spinoffs for their real worth, as opposed to false fans who just like catsuits and 'splosions, no? Just stating such a wacky idea in words is funny. My apologies to all the Voyager fans if the joke was too heavy handed or cryptic or whatever.
That people here generally hate Voyager is an untruth? That the fans who pride themselves on their sophistication and intelligence also pride themselves on hating Voyager? Sorry, both those are true.
Or is the "untruth" that such people don't consider themselves "true" fans, or at least don't call themselves such? Or that Voyager is the second most likely spinoff to import ideas from science fiction? (Especially, as context clearly implies from recent science fiction?) I suppose either statement could be true but however could saying otherwise be anything other than a minor error?
They are not fair observations because they have no bearing on the Star Trek's originality as television. Not only do they mislead from that (important) point, they are also misleading about Star Trek, which simply was not a pulp adventure like Sherlock Holmes or The Shadow or Tarzan or Bulldog Drummond. They do try to pose as sophisticated literary judgment. That's why the remarks were unfair, i.e., cheap shots.
And by the way, my one remark on Voyager was that it was likely to import new sf ideas into television. Unless someone has gotten so hidebound that new ideas are a bad thing in themselves, this is not even a negative remark!
Cheap shots? "Peter Pan is forever a boy."
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Continuing to meet said three criterias doesn't mean it not obsolete. If any other competiting show is making more money, is more entertaining and make the viewer ponder questions of morality and life more often, then Trek is obsolete. Until last may, that was true. But the new movie has given Trek a new life through an upgraded version and so far this year, nothing as made more money than Trek.
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