Things you DON'T want to see in a reboot...

[Warped9]

Lots of discussion on what people would like to see if/when Trek ever gets rebooted, either on television or film.

But let's mention things we don't want to see next time around.

I'll start.

- Technobabble. Or rather excessive technobabble.
- Ferengi
- Families on Starfleet ships
- Shakey cam and lens flare

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Starships under water
Lense flares
Enormous ships
Blingons
Poorly created female characters
Pointless stripping to skivvies
Cat suits (unless worn equally by men and women)
Human-heavy crews
Episodic format
Excessive technobabble
Big battles weekly to resolve the situation
A totally heterosexual crew

There will be more, but that's just off the top of my head.

 

[bbjeg]

^I get they wanted to get away from the 70's hairband look but I wasn't a fan of the Blingons either, and getting away from human-heavy crews would be great.

Ditsy Starfleet crewmen - The crewmen that sparks the conversation to help explain the why to the audience. He's Academy trained? (The lieutenant communications officer that couldn't distinguish language qualifies)

A revenge villain
Damsel in distress

 

[F. King Daniel]

None of TNG's pretentious nonsense. They viewed themselves as being better than everyone around them and it made them unrelatable and unlikable. Earth was a perfect paradise making them all spoiled rich kids.

If it's going to be thoughtful science fiction, make it real thoughtful science fiction, not a comic book adventure where everyone acts very stoic and hopes the viewer wont notice massive gaps in common sense (example: V'ger never thinks to wipe the muck off it's name plate)

If it's gonna be a comic book adventure, where transporters split you into good and evil halves or swap you with counterparts from the Evil Twin Universe etc. then don't later try to pretend your show is realistic science fiction (looking at you, Next Gen and early Voyager)

Pointless characters who speak in catchphrases ("He's hiding something!")

Characters whose entire reason for existing is to point out the stunningly obvious.

Episodes that have almost nothing to do with Star Trek ("The Inner Light", "Far Beyond the Stars")

Writers who assume the viewer is mentally challenged and require everything painstakingly explained to them. (TNG and Voyager were the worst, but everything post-TOS suffered from this)

Meaningless babytalk technobabble.

Meaningless babytalk technobabble used as the solution to a problem-of-the-week.

Identikit forehead aliens.

Slavish adherence to what came before.

Embarrassingly ham fisted message shows ("Blood and Fire")

Embarrassingly ham-fisted message shows with offensive endings ("The Outcast")

Decon chamber lube ups and rub downs.

Pon Farr episodes. The whole thing is utterly stupid.

Painful attempts at comedy episodes ("The Outrageous Okuna", "Rascals" etc.)

No more than two holodeck episodes in the show's entire run. And neither of them are allowed to be about baseball.

The reset button. This should include technology, which means if you invent a serum which gives your crew telekinetic powers, it doesn't get swept under the rug. If you got a 300% shield boost or ultra-mega-mega-trans-warp drive, you keep it.

Reverence of The Status Quo™. Things change and they should.

Story arcs with no long-term plan behind them (looking at you, Temporal Cold War)

A ton of plot threads left hanging at the end. Although this has led to some great novels over the years, it should all be wrapped up on the show that began it!

Killing off characters for no reason whatsoever (hiya, Trip!)

Characters falling in love inside of a day ("The Masterpiece Society" is probably the most painful offender)

Detailed space politics of the future. Earth politics of today is tedious enough.

Listening to the fans. Some will cry and whine no matter what.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Not explaining things to the audience. Every show needs a Watson.

Excessive technobabble beyond what TOS would have done.

"Main" characters who serve no real purpose (Harry Kim, Travis Mayweather, I'm looking at you).

Prioritizing catchphrases and flanderization over actual characterization.

Prime Directive episodes where the only "right" thing to do is to let mountains of innocent people die. It's supposed to stop imperialism, not compassion.

Excessive fanservice/continuity throwbacks.

Pointless "B" stories. I don't care if you want to find out what Captain Queeg's favorite flavor of Jell-O is. Don't waste half an episode on it.

Episodes that try too hard to adhere to the "Star Trek Formula" (whatever the hell that is) and end up just being cookie cutter.

If you're going to reboot it, don't half-ass it. None of this "timeline just next door" business. Go big or go home.

 

[C.E. Evans]

A lack of imagination or ambition by the writers and producers. Everything else, I'm cool with.

 

[2takesfrakes]

William Shatner.

 

[BillJ]

Story arcs, I have no use for a sci-fi soap opera. I'd rather have an episodic format.

 

[Warped9]

Continuity porn: excessive references to characters and events in previous productions. Mind you this is a problem only if a new series or film is set in the same continuity as what was done previously. If the next project is a genuine restart then this problem is largely sidestepped...or should be.

Story arcs, I have no use for a sci-fi soap opera. I'd rather have an episodic format.

Generally I agree although the reality is there could be some appeal in having a few plot threads running through the background and brought to the fore once in awhile. So a somewhat mixed format. I do think the basically episodic format works best for Star Trek because it allows for that anthology like format that worked well for TOS and TNG.

Now that said I've no interest is seeing the heavy handed A/B plot structure they got started with in TNG. It often drove me nuts and there were times the more interesting plot was shoved into the background. Either have the two (or more) plots related somehow or don't bother.

 

[Warped9]

Junk science.

Star Trek has long had certain "gimmes" of science fiction: FTL travel, teleportation, telekenesis, telepathy, cross breeding species, artificial gravity and antigravity, a few others. A lot of those are not absolutely forbidden by real science even if they could be highly unlikely. And these can be allowed if treated with a general consistency.

Science fiction is indeed the genre of asking "What if?" and that includes science itself. But beyond this I'd rather refrain from things that are just made up without a smidgen of credibility. Maybe a real silicon based life form would look nothing like a Horta, but at least there's some genuine underpinning to the idea.

But episodes like TOS' "Wink Of An Eye" and TNG's "The Next Phase" are just beyond credibility, right up there with Red Matter.

I'd just prefer to stay away from this nonsense. Find something with at least a smidgen of possibility to it or don't do it at all.

 

[T'Girl]

Preachy "evolved" Humans, whose ideology is mega-superior to anyone else.

The no religion thing.

The no money thing.

The Starfleet isn't the military thing (really?).

The "Earth is a paradise" thing.

Everyone's sexual straight thing.

The TNG version of the prime directive, The TOS version made sense.

Romulans that look like Moe Howard with shoulder pads.

The majority of the ship's crew are Human Beings (or are so by default). All Troi had was dark contact lenses and some lines in the script and "poof" she's half alien.

Neither Kirk nor Spock.

Detailed space politics of the future. Earth politics of today is tedious enough.

Agree, personally I would like to learn about different Federation cultures through having aliens in the crew who talk about their home worlds, their society.

Cultures and societies, not governments.

Listening to the fans. Some will cry and whine no matter what.

However, if both your hardcore fans and the general audience start to discontinue watching the show, that's a message you should listen too. It means you need to make some kind of change.

Listening to the fans would be one way of figuring out what changes to make.

 

[urbandefault]

1. No one in bed with anyone else. Not at all interested in seeing who's sleeping with who. I don't freaking care. If it's not a relevant story point, ditch it.

2. See #1.

3. No more time travel. It's been done to death. Cheap plot devices are tiresome and not necessary to tell a good story.

4. If you have to reference some kind of future science crap and babble about it, at least make it relate to something understandable from present day.

5. Focus on the Big Three. That's what Trek fans expect to see, and non-fans are most familiar with. Kirk, Spock, McCoy. The others are sideline characters.

6. No more extra-super-giant-size ships. Keep them in the realm of believability. Bigger is not always better.

7. Star Trek is not Star Wars. While I don't subscribe to the "cerebral" crap, at least try to keep it in the vein of the original material, i.e. action/adventure, with a little introspection for good measure.

8. Cast people who look like adults, not high school kids. I swear I went to school with people who looked more like adults than some of the current cast.

9. Hand props should look like they are actually from the future, not something from bad movies from the 1950s.

10. No more storylines that try to tie the new continuity to the past. We all have access to what's come before, so we don't need to see a new take on what's already "happened."

11. Repeat until you recite it in your sleep.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Thing I don't want:

Any Berman-Trek references
Time travel
Super-duper tech
Super evolved humans
Ron Moore's Klingons
The name of any Berman-Trek producer or writer in the credits

The no money thing.

Capitalism can only exist where there is a wedge between producer and consumer. It's difficult to imagine how there could be money in a society with replicator tech and unlimited energy supply via fusion.

 

[Warped9]

Beyond a few familiar aliens that are readily identifiable with Trek I'd possibly ditch all the rest. Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Andorians, Gorn, maybe a few others and even these could be tweaked or reinterpreted.

I certainly don't care to ever again see any Tellarites, Q, Cardassians, Breen, Vorta, Trills, Ferengi, Kazon, Founders, Denebolan, Talaxian or a multitude of foreheads of the week.

Changelings? Maybe do something different with them.

Borg? Hmm, interesting concept so maybe they could be adapted in the transition.

Now with that said there are a few TAS aliens it could be interesting to see realized as live-action even if featured for only one episode or somewhere in the background: Edoan, Caitan, Vendorian, Phylosian, Skorr, Dramian and Vedala.

 

[BigJake]

- Sentimentalism (none of this "we're a family" business, no Muppet Baby-ism, no "Enterprise is the bestest ship ever" tropes)
- Painting dully inside the lines of old visual styles and conventions
- Soap operatics and petty relationship bullsh*t (we're not here to watch the crew play out bog-standard office drama or dating crises from Felicity)
- Omnipotent Space Jerks with the possible exception of Q
- Soft-headed "destiny" themes (leave it to fantasy franchises)
- @#!$-ing product placements! (no, just no)
- Vaguely desperate attempts to establish Hipness Cred (original music yes, shoehorning the Beastie Boys in no)
- Frenetic action designed to numb and distract the audience (action-adventure does not mean "an explosion every five to seven minutes")
- Deliberate stupidity

Spoiler: Like so

(of the 'let's-freeze-it-with-"cold fusion"-see-what-we-did-there?' variety)

- Lampshading of deliberate stupidity

Spoiler: Like so

(of the 'we-know-this-is-dumb-so-let's-have-Scotty-convey-that-we're-being-all-"self-aware"' variety)

- Deliberately stupid coincidences as plot points

Spoiler: Like so

(of all the Delta Vegas in all the parallel universes, he had to crash land on mine (and so did he (within walking distance of each other (and one of them just happened to know both of us in the future (and happens to have a formula for teleporting us to the next contrived plot point)))))

- Nostalgic caricatures of established characters (either make an effort to get the character concept genuinely right or do something different)
- 'Clever' references as a substitute for actual storytelling (this includes lifting whole scenes and sequences of narrative beats from other movies, shows and franchises)

 

[thumbtack]

The "rich history".

Or any other baggage, unless CBS absolutely insist on Pine/Quinto cameos.

 

[T'Girl]

1. No one in bed with anyone else. Not at all interested in seeing who's sleeping with who. I don't freaking care. If it's not a relevant story point, ditch it.

I would disagree with this, we have people on a starship for protracted periods of time, naturally they are going to form romantic and sexual relationships that last more than a "one night stand." There are going to be long term relationships and marriages aboard the ship.

Showing the characters (not all but some) in relationships will be part of "fleshing them out." Personally I want to see it.

The no money thing.

Capitalism can only exist where there is a wedge between producer and consumer. It's difficult to imagine how there could be money in a society with replicator tech and unlimited energy supply via fusion.

A part of the problem, in terms of the plot of the show, that I have with no money (and also a limitless replicator too) is that it makes things way too easy.

Having money introduces complexity into the world we're watching on screen.

Without money there is no trade (or little) in the Federation, no little private freighters by the tens of thousands everywhere, no pirates to be protected from, no competition between Federation Members, no businesses as businesses, to names a few things the show would get from clearly having money as a consideration in the background story.

 

[CRM-114]

Get rid of the reset button. There's no drama in storytelling when everything can be undone at the drop of a hat.

 

[urbandefault]

1. No one in bed with anyone else. Not at all interested in seeing who's sleeping with who. I don't freaking care. If it's not a relevant story point, ditch it.

I would disagree with this, we have people on a starship for protracted periods of time, naturally they are going to form romantic and sexual relationships that last more than a "one night stand." There are going to be long term relationships and marriages aboard the ship.

Showing the characters (not all but some) in relationships will be part of "fleshing them out." Personally I want to see it.

I still don't need to see it. If it's not relevant to the story being told it's just fluff, or pandering to a special interest group. There's no place in good story telling for either, in my humble opinion.

I want Dragnet style Trek! Just the facts!

 

[BillJ]

I still don't need to see it. If it's not relevant to the story being told it's just fluff, or pandering to a special interest group. There's no place in good story telling for either, in my humble opinion.

I don't care if it's done well. But rarely have I seen Trek handle relationships and sex well.