TV: A reboot or a new crew?

Discussion in 'Future of Trek' started by Ryan8bit, Jan 20, 2014.

?

Do you want to see a reboot of TOS for the next show?

  1. Yes, I'd like to see Kirk & Spock (or other next gen crew) again on TV.

    19.5%
  2. Maybe... it depends on _____.

    5.7%
  3. No, I'd like to see a new crew.

    74.7%
  1. drt

    drt Commodore Commodore

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    I find him a little too soft spoken, he often seems that he's only the "nice Kirk" from "The Enemy Within"
    Concur (although I do think Quinto does a nice job), and while I enjoy the various fan-continuations, I find the actors playing the principal characters all come across as fans getting to play dress-up - this is not a dig at the overall level of acting prowess, as I don't get this from the new characters, like the red-headed counselor in Continues (whose name is escaping me at the moment) or the guest parts.
     
  2. Hober Mallow

    Hober Mallow Commodore Commodore

    I hope the next Trek reboot gives us a completely different look for Spock, and not try so hard to imitate Nimoy's look, which is all too familiar to us. Give us a new look which evokes a sense of mytery to the character that audiences must have felt the first time they saw Nimoy's Spock in the 60s. The only physical aspect of the character which should be retained is the pointed ears. I would have liked Benedict Cumberbatch to have played Spock in the last two movies, looking exactly as he did in ID (with pointed ears, of course) and playing a character similar to the one he plays on Sherlock... namely Sherlock.
     
  3. OpenMaw

    OpenMaw Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I mean no personal insult or disrespect, but that's rather terrible. Isn't that essentially what put Star Trek in the hole in the first place? Too much, resulting in a creative bankruptcy?
     
  4. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    I'd be totally fine seeing Kirk and Spock again for a new animated Trek series (especially one that takes place in its own continuity), but for live-action I'd definitely would want to see an all-new crew.
     
  5. Captain Mike

    Captain Mike Commodore Commodore

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    New crew in the original (or PRIME univerese, if that is what you prefer) definitely. Unfortunately if it was placed in the latter 1/2 of the 24th or even the 25th centuries, it would have to deal with the Romulan loss. This "let's reboot for reboots sake" tires me. :rolleyes:
     
  6. Bry_Sinclair

    Bry_Sinclair Vice Admiral Admiral

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    That I could live with, so long as Arex and M'Ress returned.
     
  7. mendelin

    mendelin Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    It would be a good idea to catch the events of ST09 in Prime Universe. Of course, it should be totally new crew. They can deal with Romulan loss and ambassador Spock disappearance. May be they would tell us story about reunion of Romulan and Vulkan people.
    In that case there is a great opportunity to make small crossovers with TNG&DS9&VOY. For example, they can add reference to B4-android story and even resolve it. They can revisit Dominion and changelings. And many more.
     
  8. SPCTRE

    SPCTRE Badass Admiral

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    Yeah, that's the commonly held wisdom pretty much. I guess that's sorta my point - it wasn't too much Trek for me back then, I was soaking it up. So, as long as it would be a sustainable business model (which it likely wouldn't be), more Trek would be fine by me.
     
  9. Timelord Victorious

    Timelord Victorious Vice Admiral Admiral

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    New Crew. New Enterprise.

    Make it look the best it possibly can. Give it one more layer of realistic detail than it ever had on TV.

    Make the star of the show the ship and the mission.

    Don't marry yourself to the characters. Tell their story, flesh them out and when their story is done let them go let someone else take over if the story demands it.

    Make edgy character drama, social commentary and allegory in the usual optimistic Star Trek style.
     
  10. Jonny

    Jonny Commander Red Shirt

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    I agree. As much as I enjoy the current movies I would prefer a new cast with a new ship and characters personally speaking.
     
  11. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Why? After forty years I'm ready to hit the reset button and start over going back to the series origins and doing a 21st century take. The world has changed a lot and Star Trek is stuck in the past.
     
  12. BigJake

    BigJake Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Agreed 100% will BillJ on this one. :techman:
     
  13. OpenMaw

    OpenMaw Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Agreed. It's the one place I wish the JJ films had actually gone even further. The connection to the past was a gift, and it's a gift I wish they hadn't given. Just go balls out and restart from scratch.

    Hell, i've always wanted to go back to Gene's original pitch for the show and reinterpret it with fresh eyes. Go in a wholly new direction.
     
  14. Jonny

    Jonny Commander Red Shirt

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    I'd personally prefer a new crew if we're talking about a new non-animated series. Animated series I wouldn't mind seeing the original crew though.
     
  15. tombo74

    tombo74 Ensign Newbie

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    I don't care. ANY new Trek on TV would be great!
     
  16. Herkimer Jitty

    Herkimer Jitty Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Indeed! So long as we get weekly cracking good yarns in space.
     
  17. Ryan8bit

    Ryan8bit Commodore Commodore

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    I'm not sure if it's reasonable to update Star Trek for the times without seriously altering it into something it's not. For starters, the original crew isn't going to fly because of the lack of women (and that will be a desirable audience to draw). One of the characters would probably be changed gender-wise, and you can bet that it would change the character. All of the characters would likely be changed into something different.

    Another point is that the future of Star Trek has been sorely outdated. The vision of the way things would happen in the 60s or the 80s just wouldn't fly today.

    Lastly, the tone would probably need to take a change. Not to say that Trek hasn't had some gloomy stuff before, but it would probably reflect the TV of today with your stereotypical anti-hero. That's not really anyone from TOS. And these people would have to die and perhaps stay dead. No immunity for everyone not wearing a red shirt, and what they do has to matter and have consequences. No reset buttons at the end of every episode because that's just not good TV today.

    So it would have to be a pretty drastic reboot at that point, in which you have to wonder, "Does it even matter?" The people who are capitalizing on the brand aren't going to make completely alien looking Spock, or gay Kirk, or female McCoy, or transgender Uhura. They're going to play it safe and put them in relatively similar situations, otherwise there isn't much of a point to reboot. They want to capitalize on the brand and success, and changing it too radically would probably turn people away. Those in charge will likely play it safe there.

    But with a new crew, a lot of that goes away. You can have whatever combination of people, you can have something new and fresh without pissing (as many) people off, and you could incorporate a lot of what we see in TV today. It would probably be a lot easier to write, and would open a lot more opportunities up, but the difficulty is in getting people to give a shit about Captain Nobody. Somehow TNG did it, so it's not impossible.

    I think some of this might play into why there is issue with Trek continuing on TV.
     
  18. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    You will get no argument from me that a rebooted franchise will have to walk a very fine line in order to work in TV today yet not lose what makes Star Trek unique. But I'll have a hard time getting into another series that starts with a Captain Nobody. When there were only seventy-nine episodes, it was easy to get excited about anything new set in the Star Trek universe. But it isn't so easy now that there are six-hundred plus episodes featuring characters that aren't Kirk and Spock.

    Honestly, Kirk and Spock are the unique quantity in Star Trek. They have less screen time of any set of characters except for Enterprise yet they still are "Star Trek" in the eyes of the general public.
     
  19. Ryan8bit

    Ryan8bit Commodore Commodore

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    But are they still Kirk and Spock if they are radically changed? If Kirk becomes a Mal Reynolds, and Spock is a woman, does that still fit into the general public's eyes? And are you sure that the general public that TPTB even care about (younger people) care as much about Kirk & Spock as they do Picard or someone else? A lot of people in key demos were likely raised on TNG or later shows, and have a good chance of being familiar with the original, but is that what they hold highest? Do Kirk and Spock encompass Star Trek to them? Of course any answers here are likely to be opinions or too difficult to accurately say.

    I also don't think the amount of screen time really amounts to anything consequential, but that too is an opinion.
     
  20. BigJake

    BigJake Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Technically you could probably just provide more active roles / personalities for the women already present in the original crew, as Abrams did (to some extent) with Uhura. The original series was hardly lacking in women, it just put them in mostly minor or passive roles.

    There is in point of fact a lot today's television could learn from the original series in terms of rendering characters who do what Starfleet is supposed to be doing in a believable fashion. The funny thing is that believably-rendered semi-military professionals would be something "different" (in the sense that everything old is new again), and refreshingly so, from a lot of what's currently on television.

    Updating the futurism -- and leaving behind tropes that started out as budget conveniences in early Trek before calcifying into traditions -- would be a major necessity.

    I don't think this is necessarily so. I mean, I think it would be a necessity for any such concept to draw on the best of contemporary storytelling and drama and try to leave the genre better than it found it -- but that doesn't necessarily mean going in for "stereotypical anti-heroes" (which I suspect television audiences are ready for a break from, much as I love Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and House of Cards) or entirely abandoning episodic story-telling (which is still done well, if on a more sophisticated level today than in the Sixties) and drives a number of popular shows.

    Probably the biggest differences from the Great Bird's day are that

    a) there is a bigger range dramatically of what you can do with characters today and keep them sympathetic for the audience (the Trek format used to be nervous about treating topics, like military politics and scheming, that are actually quite interesting for audiences today), and that

    b) the more or less unalloyed celebration of the American Navy in Space that formed the core of the old Trek is a harder sell now (as is anything reminiscent of the American military in an era not only post-Vietnam, but also post-Iraq War). This I think is one of the key reasons the NuTrek characters are so un-military; it's not that Abrams is a twerp hipster who doesn't understand discipline or professionalism, it's more probably that he was calculating (and with some justification if so) that the straight-ahead military heroism of TOS Kirk and company would arguably seem cornball to audiences today.

    Fortunately it would be perfectly possible to re-conceive Starfleet as an avatar of truly international achievement instead of as America Writ Large across space. All you'd have to do is learn from modern film and television that updates the image of sympathetic military leadership and its struggles for modern audiences (Crimson Tide, Hunt for Red October, K-19: The Widowmaker [despite its unfortunate title] are all good examples), and give up on the habit (some) Trek captains had of running around lecturing everybody about the superiority of the Amer- uhh, the Federation's lifestyle.

    This, absolutely.

    As long as the concept is fresh, and executed with a bit of verve and vision, getting audiences to care about a new cast of characters shouldn't that difficult. It's having the fresh concept, the verve and the vision that's the big hurdle. I definitely don't think Kirk and Spock are particularly necessary to any rebooted endeavour.

    Indeed I might go a step further: the whole Spockogenic concept of having a character around to be The Logical One, which was reproduced in every Trek show without fail, has aged poorly (which I think is one of the key reasons NuSpock barely evinces that trait today). Nor does a modern audience necessarily need the Captain to be an avatar of White Male Privilege, which is what Kirk mostly seems to have become in the public imagination (although there was more to the original character than that).