will star trek ever return to prime universe?

[Greg Cox]

I think that's more a case of a franchise spliting off into two separate continuities rather than backtracking

Which could maybe still be the case with Star Trek. Maybe the movies will continue with the alternate universe, and maybe a series would be in the prime universe. It probably wouldn't happen that way if the Bad Robot team controls the TV series though. I think it's too hard to say since a TV series doesn't even seem likely for the next few years. There's a lot of variables.

Perhaps, but I don't really see the upside to going back to the old continuity at some later date, especially as time goes by and the previous cycle of Trek shows fades into the misty recesses of memory, at least as far as the general public is concerned.

Better to stick to the modern continuity or start over again . . . .

 

[Nerys Myk]

In a real sense, that's how Trek began--with a crew of nobodies. The key with any television series, regardless if it's Trek or not, is creating characters that click with an audience enough that they want to watch them again and again to see what they do or what happens to them next.

As long as the name "Star Trek" is attached to a project it will be judged by what came before. Kirk, Spock and McCoy are iconic and part of our culture. The characters that followed have never reached that level of renown. I don't know if they ever will.

To be fair, I'm sure people said similar things back in the eighties before TNG debuted, and yet people accepted a STAR TREK series without Kirk and the usual gang--for seven successful seasons.

On TV at least, TNG was an unqualified success, even if the TOS crew has a better track record on the big screen.

It was successful, but I don't think the characters have become iconic.

 

[C.E. Evans]

As long as the name "Star Trek" is attached to a project it will be judged by what came before. Kirk, Spock and McCoy are iconic and part of our culture. The characters that followed have never reached that level of renown. I don't know if they ever will.

To be fair, I'm sure people said similar things back in the eighties before TNG debuted, and yet people accepted a STAR TREK series without Kirk and the usual gang--for seven successful seasons.

On TV at least, TNG was an unqualified success, even if the TOS crew has a better track record on the big screen.

It was successful, but I don't think the characters have become iconic.

Characters really only need to be likable and interesting enough for a good-sized audience to tune in every week (it's how most successful shows operate). They generally don't reach iconic status until many years later anyway, and then only very few of them.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

Why not? Classic characters can always be recast . . . .

Because no one can act like Stewart or Shatner no matter how many manerisms they try to replicate. I'd never buy it, just like I didn't nuKirk. It was just alien to me.

PS. Those were all movies, and no continuity movies at that. When you see Picard in almost 200 episodes, it's a bit different from replacing shambolic Cloney with serious actor like Bale. Comic books vs Star Trek is too much like apples and oranges

Okay, what about Bond? Suppose somebody had decided decades ago that "no one can act like Connery no matter how many mannerisms they try to replicate." Should they have ditched the character back in the seventies?

Heck, Bela Lugosi was the definitive Dracula for generations, but then Christopher Lee came along, and Frank Langella, and Jack Palance, and Gary Oldman . . .

No actor is irreplaceable. And audiences have proven that they'll accept new actors in classic roles, sometimes over and over and over.

There have been six different SUPERMAN's in my lifetime. Another Kirk or Picard doesn't faze me!

Connory wasn't Bond. Bond was a book character. Anyone could interpret it however they wanted, so anyone who slightly resembles the character could pull it off. Besides, it's not a serious movie, it's just a bunch of gimmicks, who would want that for Trek? I don't think Trek characters are in the same vane as these comic book characters. Star Trek is about the future of humanity, not different people portraying Picard during the 2360's and 2370's over and over and over again. Picard is Stewart, anyone else would be a poor pale immitation.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

The abortion that was the movie would never fly as a TV series because you wouldn't have a dedicated fanbase.

Yeah, because Star Trek '09 was a dismal failure that nobody went to see.

BTW, I think the word you were looking for was "abomination," not "abortion." An abortion is the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus. Using that word as a metaphor for a movie would not make you very popular with the female sex. The next time you bash Abrams's film, you might want to be a bit more careful with your choice of derogatory statements.



I believe Ron Moore said it best when he said that people's attitude should be "Yay, another Star Trek series!," not "Oh God, not another Star Trek series..." My fear is that making a new series with a new cast in the prime universe, but just farther into the future, would just give people reaction #2. Changing the time period is not good enough (but don't take my word for that, just see how good that worked with Enterprise). C.E. Evans is right: the characters are the most important thing, not the setting.

It looks like I stepped on some fanboy's toes. I'm not going to go off topic and discuss how pathetic your favorite movie is.

About characters, Star Trek is not about characters as much as setting and general themes. Yeah Kirk, Spock and McCoy were great and certainly played their part, but only to further the theme that Rodenberry had in mind. Gene didnt' want emotions like hatred, jelaousy, lust, infighting etc in Trek, which removes your options of too many character driven stories. He rewrote most of TNG season one. If Kirk and Spock were in some western, nobody would be talking about them today, it was the setting that made them famous.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

I honestly can't think of a single movie or tv franchise that reverted back to a previous continuity after being rebooted.

I think the biggest one that strikes me would be Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. They ignored the third movie completely. But the fourth movie continued from the third despite the TV show. Yeah, Terminator is definitely not as big of a continuity as Trek, but it's at least a decent example. There are other examples in movies where a new direction was forgotten.

You know, instead of recasting, they could do something original and create new Trek characters to launch a new show or movie!

But they'll all just be pale imitations of the characters and situations we've already seen.

Wouldn't that be the case for recasting too?

Personally, I'd want a new set of characters for TV.

Yeah, apparantly new series with original ideas would be immitations, but a faux Kirk and Picard wouldn't.

 

[Dukhat]

It looks like I stepped on some fanboy's toes. I'm not going to go off topic and discuss how pathetic your favorite movie is.

I wasn't discussing the movie. I was discussing your poor choice of words.

 

[horatio83]

You know, instead of recasting, they could do something original and create new Trek characters to launch a new show or movie!

This. Recasting old characters has little to do with boldly going where no one has gone before.

About characters, Star Trek is not about characters as much as setting and general themes.

Precisely. It is understandable (yet of course not excusable, at least Trek fans should know better) though that the new movie has made people forget that the foundation of Trek are not three characters but its general principles.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Whether the original intent or not, it's those characters who inspired the Star Trek boom of the 70's - without which, Trek would have faded away as just another cancelled TV series.

We got "more Trek 'verse with new characters" four times, with diminishing returns.

 

[BillJ]

It looks like I stepped on some fanboy's toes. I'm not going to go off topic and discuss how pathetic your favorite movie is.

This is a childish comment.

For me, Star Trek 2009 is not my favorite movie by a wide margin. But if I'm a studio exec betting studio money and my job on Trek, I'm going to go with the iconic characters.

About characters, Star Trek is not about characters as much as setting and general themes. Yeah Kirk, Spock and McCoy were great and certainly played their part, but only to further the theme that Rodenberry had in mind. Gene didnt' want emotions like hatred, jelaousy, lust, infighting etc in Trek, which removes your options of too many character driven stories. He rewrote most of TNG season one. If Kirk and Spock were in some western, nobody would be talking about them today, it was the setting that made them famous.

You do realize for twenty plus years that Kirk, Spock and McCoy were Star Trek. TNG may have been watched by more people in its original run, but they simply didn't have the staying power of the original characters. And the spin-offs are barely a footnote in TV history.

Oh yeah, Roddenberry's final credited story for TNG was Datalore (which was the 12th episode) and there's some disagreement on who was actually rewriting the episodes, Gene or his attorney.

Yeah, apparantly new series with original ideas would be immitations, but a faux Kirk and Picard wouldn't.

If I'm a studio head and I see the diminishing returns that each successive series brought, I'm going to go with recognizable characters when attempting to sell the series to the public.

 

[BillJ]

Precisely. It is understandable (yet of course not excusable, at least Trek fans should know better) though that the new movie has made people forget that the foundation of Trek are not three characters but its general principles.

The foundation of Trek was Forbidden Planet, American westerns and police procedurals.

 

[Retrograde Orbit]

I'd love to see Star Trek come back to where it shines best, television. But given the nature of how shows now seem to come and go with monotonous regularity, I can't see a new Star Trek show lasting seven seasons ever again.

Would love to be proven wrong though!

 

[Greg Cox]

Gene didnt' want emotions like hatred, jelaousy, lust, infighting etc in Trek, which removes your options of too many character driven stories. .

Gotta disagree with you there. Have you watched TOS lately? It's full of raw human emotions and conflict. Look at "Conscience of the King," which is all about guilt, murder, insanity, and revenge. Or "The Galileo Seven," with people losing their tempers under stress. Or "And Is there in Truth No Beauty?" which is an emotional drama full of lust and murder and jealousy. Or "The Enemy Within" in which Kirk realizes that he needs his primitive, animalistic side to be a whole human being. Or pretty much any scene with McCoy . . . .

Not sure where people got the idea that TOS was this purely cerebral, utopian exercise in science and rationality. It was full of flawed, passionate, very human characters who were frequently at odds with each other. Ultimately, drama is about character and emotion, the human heart in conflict with itself, not science and sociology.

There's a reason everybody remembers "City on the Edge of Forever"--and that's because it's a tragic love story in which Kirk gets torn up inside . . . .

And I don't think lumping Kirk and Spock in with Bond or Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes or whomever is doing them a disservice. That's pretty good company to be in.

 

[horatio83]

Nothing about these stupid three characters or "raw emotions" is quintessential Trek. Its principles, created by Roddenberry, sticked to even by anti-Roddenberryians like Meyers and maintained throughout the MAJORITY (there are twenty-eighty seasons, not merely three) of Trek by Berman, are.

 

[Greg Cox]

Nothing about these stupid three characters or "raw emotions" is quintessential Trek. Its principles, created by Roddenberry, sticked to even by anti-Roddenberryians like Meyers and maintained throughout the MAJORITY (there are twenty-eighty seasons, not merely three) of Trek by Berman, are.

Well, one can argue that Roddenberry's own approach varied over the years--and, of course, he had nothing to do with DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and most of the movies.

Me, I confess I prefer the more rough-and-tumble attitude of TOS, and like the way the new movie has brought some of that rambunctious spirit back . . . .

Think of it as getting back in touch with Trek's roots.

 

[horatio83]

Nothing wrong with that. All I tried to point out was that what distinguishes Trek, its core, is not tied to particular characters or settings. Which is why I'd welcome any new Trek series that is truthful to these few axioms and totally free in any other respect instead of, like the last movie, going through the familiar moves, putting some fanwank glitter on top of it but not caring one iota about Trek's general principles.
If this sounds dogmatic it probably is. I wouldn't want some cyberpunkish sc-fi franchise to stop being cyberpunk. Arbitrariness is wrong in every area of life.

 

[Ryan8bit]

I don't really see the upside to going back to the old continuity at some later date, especially as time goes by and the previous cycle of Trek shows fades into the misty recesses of memory, at least as far as the general public is concerned.

Yeah, in that regard it's not really the same as Terminator. They wanted to ignore T3 because it wasn't well received. But that same reasoning couldn't really exist for Star Trek. I suppose if the creators of a new series themselves didn't care for it, it'd be possible, but that's probably unlikely. It doesn't really need a "deboot."

If anything, I think it could possibly happen as a result of wanting to go back to see the next gen crews, or paying tribute to the hundreds of hours of established Trek history from before. I'm sure that the latest movie increased the sales of other Star Trek DVDs, but I wonder if a series that is unaffected by those old shows would have that same effect. If what happened in those series is inconsequential to the new one, what reason would there be to follow it?

I'm sort of torn on the issue. While I'd love for them to keep on going with the old continuity, it was getting bloated with each iteration. But most reboots aren't really going to fix that problem either. It's like defragging a hard drive because it's just going to get cluttered up again.

 

[Greg Cox]

That's the thing. I suspect people have different ideas about what is essentially "Star Trek." As a storyteller, I always find it little off-putting when people put abstract "principles" ahead of the basics of story, character, emotion, and drama. And as an old-school TOS partisan, I tend to object when people try to apply TNG-era standards to classic TOS, which really doesn't fit that mold at all.

Me, I grew up on TOS so that's still my touchstone where Trek is concerned, although I enjoyed the later series to various degrees--and have even written for most of them!

 

[horatio83]

Bullshit. Trek is an optimistic sci-fi franchise in which humankind has defeated hunger, poverty, war and united to explore space, meet new people and encounter new challenges ... and no, there wasn't any paradigm shift between TOS and TNG. You cannot play the postmodern game of "Trek is whatever you want it to be" unless you confuse preferences with facts. There aren't any famines on Earth or any Imperial Federation warships cruising the Klingon border.

 

[BillJ]

Funny, I don't remember any one ever calling Earth a paradise in TOS. And I'm sure that the Klingons and Romulans saw those ships on there borders as warships. Perspective is a bitch.