I can't blame Paramount for not taking a chance on a DS9 movie. If the crown jewel of the franchise couldn't draw the general public there was no way the black sheep was going to.
It wouldn't kill Paramount to make a 5th TNG movie, or will it?
- Thread starter TroiFan4ever
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I don't think Paramount went into Nemesis with the thought "this will be the last one". I am sure it crossed their minds, but if Nemesis made money, TNG 5 would have been made.
I remember Stewart in interviews saying, in regards to the film's tag line ("A Generation's Final Journey Begins"), to focus on the word "begins" instead of the word "final".
I remember Stewart in interviews saying, in regards to the film's tag line ("A Generation's Final Journey Begins"), to focus on the word "begins" instead of the word "final".
Here's my problem with this...
The publisher basically says that the fans better consider themselves lucky that he is so kind to give them continuity and other stuff, but that he could actually do whatever he wants to do. At the same time he also prevents fans from writing and publishing their own stuff. That's kinda unfair. He's got the monopol, and doesn't really listen.
Because the publisher paid a great deal of money to Paramount for the exclusive right to publish STAR TREK novels? And because STAR TREK is not public domain?
That's just the way it works in the real world.
Yeah, they paid a shitload for their monopol. And?
And Greg answered your question, the publisher has paid for the rights to produce original Trek material and therefore has the right to state terms of continunity, etc.
Well, of course the Stargazer bridge set was a redress of the TNG battle bridge set, which was in turn a redress of the movie Enterprise bridge set. That set, at least the superstructure of it, remained standing for the entire two-plus decades that the rest of the movie sets (corridors, engineering, sickbay, transporter room, crew quarters) on Paramount Stage 9 remained standing, and it was frequently redressed to represent various bridges, Data's cybernetics lab, and other locales.
I think they were aware it might be the last one, otherwise they wouldn't have allowed the crew to actually go through major changes like Riker getting his own command. That's the pattern in Trek movies -- as long as they're popular, the status quo is maintained and any major change is undone within the next two films at most, and it's only in the last film that the characters are allowed to grow and change in any real way.
Naturally there were contingency plans for continuing the series if NEM did well, but it does seem they were aware of the possibility that this might be their swan song. A lot of films are planned like that -- to be able to work as a concluding chapter but have wiggle room for sequels.
But that's just it -- it isn't "their own." Star Trek is the property of CBS Studios (and before that, Paramount). It belongs to them, not to anyone else. Companies like Pocket and IDW and whoever makes the computer games pay CBS for licenses to publish tie-in material, but everything they publish is the property of CBS. When I write Trek novels, what I write does not belong to me, nor does it belong to Pocket. It belongs to CBS. Everything I create automatically becomes CBS's property, because it's part of the Star Trek franchise that belongs to them. Pocket Books and its authors are producing new Trek material on behalf of CBS. So no, we can't do whatever we want to do. We can only do what CBS Consumer Products clears us to do. We're working for them. And no, Pocket Books isn't preventing fans from publishing unlicensed Trek fiction for profit -- the copyright laws of the United States of America are preventing that.
If you want the freedom to write and publish your own stuff, then make it your own. Star Trek belongs to somebody else, and the only people who can create Trek fiction for profit are those whom they license to do so. But if you create your own universe, your own characters, your own stories and situations, you can write whatever you want and market it wherever you want. If you're that eager to have the freedom to write what you want and make money from it, then you shouldn't be trying to write tie-ins to other people's universes, you should be creating your own.
And nobody's preventing you from writing Trek fiction for Pocket. New authors have to come from somewhere. Sure, you have to compete with a lot of other authors and prove you have the skill and professionalism to rise above the pack, but if you've really got the chops and are willing to do the hard work rather than just whining that the system is stacked against you, there's nothing to stop you.
Uh...okay.
I think so also, but not for a good while. It's all a matter of timing. There is already a nostalgia for TNG which will gain over time, but for now, it's TOS reboot time, which I think is particularly nice considering the age of the TOS cast. It comes full circle for them.
Well, in the promo posters for this motion picture, they got something like "a final journey" or something like that...
And people here are saying TNG 5 isn't happening because TNG 4 didn't make enough money because had it did, and this makes sence, we would probably be up to TNG 7 right about now.
So they knew from the door Nemesis would suck right before they released it? Interesting.
That doesn't follow at all. As I said already, they certainly left the door open for continuation if it did well enough. But I think they knew that audience interest in the franchise was in decline. It had nothing to do with their expectations about the quality of the movie, just with their awareness of the audience trends. Not to mention the fact that the cast was getting older, that Spiner didn't want to play Data anymore, that Stewart was getting plenty of other work and might not continue to be available. So they made a film that they were aware might well be the last one, but of course they tried to make it good enough that people would want more.
What a shame, then, that (from all accounts I've read) Spiner's and Stewart's power over the script - in Spiner's case, a credited contribution - had something to do with Nemesis' failure (together with Messrs. Logan and Baird).
Perhaps it was simply the inherent nature of the TNG film series that it become Picard- and Data-centric, and hence each successive TNG film would have to yield a little more script control to Spiner and Stewart. If so, perhaps any fourth TNG film would have met Nemesis' fate, whether or not it featured clones of Picard or Data or borrowed elements from Wrath of Khan. I admire Stewart and Spiner greatly for their skill as actors - did anyone here catch Stewart as Claudius in Hamlet last year on PBS? - but how many actors who fancy themselves writers really have got the goods?
Perhaps it was simply the inherent nature of the TNG film series that it become Picard- and Data-centric, and hence each successive TNG film would have to yield a little more script control to Spiner and Stewart. If so, perhaps any fourth TNG film would have met Nemesis' fate, whether or not it featured clones of Picard or Data or borrowed elements from Wrath of Khan. I admire Stewart and Spiner greatly for their skill as actors - did anyone here catch Stewart as Claudius in Hamlet last year on PBS? - but how many actors who fancy themselves writers really have got the goods?
^Well, Spiner just got a story credit because he contributed one of the plot elements. In fact, he was the one who brought in John Logan to do the actual writing. So it's not like he imagined himself to be a writer.
And Nimoy had story input into TVH and TUC, and those turned out pretty well. On the other hand, Shatner had story input into TFF...
And Nimoy had story input into TVH and TUC, and those turned out pretty well. On the other hand, Shatner had story input into TFF...
Interesting you should say that, Chris.
I recall reading somewhere he said something along the lines that he felt too old to play the role. It's also interesting considering that he co-wrote Nemesis, and considering what happens to Data at the end of Nemesis. So if it's true that he didn't want to play Data anymore, he wrote himself outta the franchise by blowing himself up... very clever Spiner, if you happen to be reading this.
But... in Enterprise's finale which was released three years after Nemesis, he did give a brief voiceover role, reprising his role as Data as he was talking to Troi. I recall someone saying in this thread about the whole TNG cast being asked if they wanted to return for Enterprise finale and only Franks, Sirtis, and Spiner said they wanted to return... I was watching this one video on YouTube where Spiner said it would take him at least an hour each morning to get the pale makeup put on his face and hands, and an hour in the evening to get it removed. Maybe he didn't feel like going through that when "These are the Voyages" was being made, so he agreed to just provide the commvoice dialogue. And if that's the case, I don't blame him.
But I would have liked to see what Geordi and Data would've looked like in "These are the Voyages" if they physically returned.
Yes, but in Shatner's defense, that was mostly dialogue, which is actually one of TTF's strong-points. (Shatner made some pretty bad directing/production choices as well, as we all know, but his writing chops are better than a lot of others who have worked on Trek. Hell, his writing/dialog help in TOS really helped make it what it was.)
Such a thing was already alluded to in TNG: "Inheritance." Geordi says of the Julianna android: "It's part of her aging program. Not only does she age in appearance like Data, her vital signs change too." However, this throwaway line was forgotten by Insurrection, in which Data said, "My operation depends on specifications that do not change. I will never know the experience of growing up."
Besides, I don't believe it was purely about his aging appearance. Brent Spiner is a character actor whose background is in the theater. A character actor's craft is about diversity, about trying new and different things. (Remember, Spiner's most prominent roles before Data were a German coachman in Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway and a dimwitted hillbilly on the sitcom Night Court.) It's understandable that he wouldn't want to be stuck playing the same role for the rest of his life -- especially once the later movies completely abandoned the potential of the emotion chip and regressed his character to square one rather than letting him continue to grow. Maybe he just decided there was nothing more to discover about Data, or that he'd rather explore playing different characters, characters that were appropriate to his advancing age and let him use what it gave him, rather than a perpetual man-child like Data.
Currently that's Digital Extremes based in London, Ontario - they're working on the STXI/STXII tie-in game for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, working title "Star Trek".
