Lol - did I touch a nerve? I rather disliked everybody smoking too but meh don't take my comparison too literally. Intelligent sci fi often has a smaller audience because it tries to avoid the lowest common denominators as a method of enlarging its audience. The most successful shows can find that magic formula to engage people on multiple levels. And I'm not suggesting that intelligent people have to like intelligent sci fi. I'm sure the heavy-handed religious allegories in NuBSG didn't find favour with some fans and I found the sheer level of dysfunctionality of many of the characters to be frustrating at times. That was partly the point - the 'villainous' cylons were actually better human beings than most of the humans. Adama himself laid that out in a speech in the mini series.
Trek can be too sanitised. I don't think it should ever become as grimy as NuBSG but the NuBSG method of storytelling works better for a modern audience in my view. Buffy is another show that worked quite well in this regard, although there the overreaching arc changed every season.
I include relationships that don't stagnate or get reset at the end of the episode, an overreaching plot arc involving recurring characters that aren't the main heroes, and a wide recurring supporting cast so that you care about the death of that redshirt a little bit more (I mean, who wasn't glad that Olsen died in NuTrek? What a dick).
Omega_Glory
Commodore
I believe TOS done today would be much like Stargate.
L
Lord Garth
Guest
The short of it is Star Trek, created entirely from scratch today, would be completely unrecognizable. Too much of the show and what came after it was a result of the timing.
The semi-long of it:
Without a war with a draft, Gene Roddenberry has no reason to join the military. Subsequently, not being ex-military means he's unlikely to have wanted to become a cop. Gene Roddenberry still became interested in the emerging television market so a Gene who lived later would still be interested in television. There are two types of people who want to tell stories in film, those who have lived through stories they want to share and those who just grew up watching stories. Given all of Gene's problems and inhibitions, he'd be far more likely to be the latter in today's environment.
Also, content in television is freer now than it was in the 1950s and '60s, so he wouldn't have had to worry about masking the types of stories he wanted to tell as much as he did back then. There would be far fewer "message shows" if any at all.
Not to mention the space program was big in the '60s, as opposed to now, and Star Trek redefined space series on television. Without Star Trek, all you really have is Lost in Space and a lot of crappy sci-fi shows from the '70s and '80s that never lasted. And without TOS you don't get TNG which, to this day, I believe is responsible for making the flood of space-based series in the last two decades possible. Including the new version of BSG.
So you have a TV landscape where space sci-fi is lower regarded and even more niche than it is now. More than likely Star Trek made today would be a crappy show, with no message, that would air on Sy-Fy.
Gene Roddenberry's original idea for Star Trek was "The Cage", so we'll use those characters as a starting point.
Pike is cut from the same mold as Kirk except more serious. He could stay. In the 1960s, Spock inherited Number One's intelligence and cold demeanor. In 2010, Number One would stay Number One, so Spock would just be the alien who smiles and screams "The Women!!!"
Without the actors', the interaction between McCoy, who would still be Boyce, and Spock would never develop... not that it would even be the same Spock anyway.
The Klingons and Romulans, who were analogues from the Soviets and Chinese, would be obsolete.
With story arcs, the Enterprise might discover a "strange new world" every half-season with the crew spending several episodes in a row around a certain region.
And, of course, there wouldn't even be a guarantee that the Enterprise would even be part of Starfleet, a.k.a. the navy in space. It might be a different type of ship on different types of missions because who's to say a military ship would be the first thing to spring to mind for someone who wasn't in the service? For all we know, it could be a crew of space-truckers like on Alien,or just a group of scientists in space.
There are several factors for why I believe a Star Trek created from scratch today would be completely different.
The semi-long of it:
Without a war with a draft, Gene Roddenberry has no reason to join the military. Subsequently, not being ex-military means he's unlikely to have wanted to become a cop. Gene Roddenberry still became interested in the emerging television market so a Gene who lived later would still be interested in television. There are two types of people who want to tell stories in film, those who have lived through stories they want to share and those who just grew up watching stories. Given all of Gene's problems and inhibitions, he'd be far more likely to be the latter in today's environment.
Also, content in television is freer now than it was in the 1950s and '60s, so he wouldn't have had to worry about masking the types of stories he wanted to tell as much as he did back then. There would be far fewer "message shows" if any at all.
Not to mention the space program was big in the '60s, as opposed to now, and Star Trek redefined space series on television. Without Star Trek, all you really have is Lost in Space and a lot of crappy sci-fi shows from the '70s and '80s that never lasted. And without TOS you don't get TNG which, to this day, I believe is responsible for making the flood of space-based series in the last two decades possible. Including the new version of BSG.
So you have a TV landscape where space sci-fi is lower regarded and even more niche than it is now. More than likely Star Trek made today would be a crappy show, with no message, that would air on Sy-Fy.
Gene Roddenberry's original idea for Star Trek was "The Cage", so we'll use those characters as a starting point.
Pike is cut from the same mold as Kirk except more serious. He could stay. In the 1960s, Spock inherited Number One's intelligence and cold demeanor. In 2010, Number One would stay Number One, so Spock would just be the alien who smiles and screams "The Women!!!"
Without the actors', the interaction between McCoy, who would still be Boyce, and Spock would never develop... not that it would even be the same Spock anyway.
The Klingons and Romulans, who were analogues from the Soviets and Chinese, would be obsolete.
With story arcs, the Enterprise might discover a "strange new world" every half-season with the crew spending several episodes in a row around a certain region.
And, of course, there wouldn't even be a guarantee that the Enterprise would even be part of Starfleet, a.k.a. the navy in space. It might be a different type of ship on different types of missions because who's to say a military ship would be the first thing to spring to mind for someone who wasn't in the service? For all we know, it could be a crew of space-truckers like on Alien,or just a group of scientists in space.
There are several factors for why I believe a Star Trek created from scratch today would be completely different.
So saying is that we'd end up with something written by some 70's era hippy truck driver. The crew of the spaceship would be a psuedo-military working for a private company looking for worlds to exploit. They come across a promising planet with an abundance of some ultra-valuable mineral. And all that stands in their way is the 10-foot tall blue natives.
Suppose it would make any money? Hey, we could even have it done in 3-D.
Suppose it would make any money? Hey, we could even have it done in 3-D.
Don't apologize. I feel the same way you do about New Galactica, and could not be more insulted by what they did to the good name of the original if I tried.
I was most disappointed that we got no Cassiopeia (Firefly showed how cool a tart with a heart could be), no ovions, no Imperious Leader/Iblis, and no Muffett 2!
Still, at least old BSG fans can completely ignore the new continuity! NuTrek (and Nero) co-exists alongside the old Trek, which must be disconcerting for non-fans.
^Co-exists? That's supposition. There are haters out there having fits on a daily basis because they insist that their Trek has been "erased" by Nero's messing around. As if their DVD collection is in danger of melting or something.
And besides, wasn't all that "this has all happened before and will all happen again" crap, as well as 70's style cylons cropping up every now and then, a hint that the old BSG may have been a prior 'cycle'?
And besides, wasn't all that "this has all happened before and will all happen again" crap, as well as 70's style cylons cropping up every now and then, a hint that the old BSG may have been a prior 'cycle'?
Yeah that stuff was a hilarious truism. What I liked about the show was that it raised pretentious expecations and then dashed them with logical but really mundane explanations (especially in the Plan). If this stuff was an intentional pot shot at religion vs reality then it was a home run that a lot of people failed to notice. I like to think so.
I really don't understand what the old Trek fans are so up in arms about. I'm seriously peeved at the stupidity of the destruction of Romulus and (presumably) Remus in the Prime timeline but NuTrek is just a parallel universe. Old Trek has 'jumped' into these repeatedly over the years and nobody worried much. I think they are peeved that we may not see the prime universe on screen ever again, which is understandably upsetting, but the TV franchise had run out of steam and no longer seemed in tune with the zeitgeist. They may even use the reset button at the end of a trilogy for all we know.
A whole lot less mini-skirts. 
Less than you might think, the storm following the nuMovie has, you have to admit, largely died down, Given the bulk of "True Universe" trek that is out there, the last movie can be regarded by the majority of fans as a one off oddity. Trek really hasn't had a reset and if Abram's intent was to create a new continuity he ultimately has failed. The new series of movies will probabaly continue to be made, and will have the same relevance to the fans as the mirror universe and the anti-matter universe that Lazarus came from.Still, at least old BSG fans can completely ignore the new continuity! NuTrek (and Nero) co-exists alongside the old Trek, which must be disconcerting for non-fans.
The on going fix that I've personal came up with is the the alternate universe shown in the last movie was always separate, it isn't the prime universe that split off when one starfleet ship was destroy (killing only a small number of people) by a mystery ship that never showed itself for another quarter century. It was always a different place, running in parallel with the prime universe , both of which still exist just fine.
I think you must be right. It seems highly unlikely that the Kelvin's destruction alone (Starships were destoyed all the time in TOS) could have led to so many leaps forward in technology (e.g. transporters & warp speeds) or such a massive devolvement in Vulcan technology and common sense. I think it could be the same universe as Star Trek V. I don't recall them saying that Vulcan HADN'T been destroyed in that movie...
T'Girl and Pauln6, you just tell yourselves whatever you have to to sleep comfortably at night. I don't know how you ever survived the changes to Trek in TMP, TNG and Enterprise.
Just a thought: One could argue that the Nerada's attack on the Kelvin altered Starfleet's tech later in the same way the Doomsday Machine may have led to the changes seen in TMP or even the Excelsior.
Just a thought: One could argue that the Nerada's attack on the Kelvin altered Starfleet's tech later in the same way the Doomsday Machine may have led to the changes seen in TMP or even the Excelsior.
Lol - TMP did go overboard with their new uniforms (which I don't dislike in spite of a lot of hatred for them) but I have to say I absolutely love that movie. The TMP Enterprise is still my favourite and I loved the Rec Deck scene with all those aliens peppered in among the crew. I just wish they'd slapped latex on more people - I could only find 3 vulcans, 3 rhaandarites, 3 andorians, 2 saurians, 2 betelgeusians, 1 tellarite (although I think she was intended to be a different species she looks enough like a pig for my taste), and 2 arcturians.
If they could have married up the energy and pace of TWoK and NuTrek with the designs of TMP I'd be very happy.
Since the thread title is open ended I will suggest that the science fiction part would probably not be so 1960s as was mentioned in this thread this week: Do you wish there was a bit more science fiction in Star Trek?
I don't agree fully as VOY and ENT has had some concepts such as genetic enhancements as well as cybernetic with 7of9's character after The Doctor removed most of her Borg implants.
Very insightful. TOS is what it is greatly due to the world and experiences its creators brought to it. Change what came before and you can't help having a different outcome.
startrekrcks
Fleet Captain
How is Star Trek 09 mindless action fluff to some
You know another thing I realised is that if TOS were made today then if it got popular enough for a spin off, then on an episode of TOS they would show the cast of the new spin off as a guest crew in an episode and give them a lot more screen time and development then guest characters would usually get months before the spin off would premier.
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