A TOS resurgence?

I'm assuming you mean would TOS if it was made today, would it have become as culturally significant? I think it would, if it was made with as much quality and dramatic power as, say, Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, yes!

 

But then it really wouldn't be TOS. Plus, I have very little interest in either of the shows you mention.

 

So your "degree" would be zero, then?

 

"Saving the franchise" and bringing added interest to TOS are not the same thing.

 

The argument is a bit semantic. Which is my kind of argument.

The franchise would still be making money right now if Abrams hadn't come along. OTOH, it would also be in the process of dwindling; the primary fuel of Trek was the screen product, without new infusions there's a limit to how long all the tie-in merchandise and literature and comic books can keep spooling itself out and retain profitability. "The franchise" proper was not "dead" when Abrams signed on, but its heart, the screen franchise, had most certainly stopped pumping. It was just a matter of time before the rest of the body got the message.

Abrams' films certainly reanimated public interest, which is no doubt what they were meant to do. I don't believe they've "breathed new life" into the franchise, which right now is kind of a Frankenstein's Monster suspended in an awkward place between life and undeath; Warped9 is right to point out that it seems to have led to little in the way of anything new in the way of real money-making add-ons beyond the short-term box office and BluRay-DVD cash infusions, and given that it was all pitched to an entirely casual audience that's not surprising. (Moreover as film quality goes, they're not the kind of super-compelling product that has any real chance in the "long game;" regard for the AbramsTrek films seems to be decaying after the waves of studio-managed hype that launched them.)

So my vote is that AbramsTrek put the franchise back in motion again -- which is important -- but that claims of its "resurrecting" the franchise are overblown.

 

TOS deals with multiple abstract and adult concepts that may be too much for childrens' minds to understand and appreciate, yet. Don't give up hope.

Just asked my 10 year old stepson what he liked about TOS: The transporter beaming, the phasers, Mr. Spock's ears, his neck pinch, warp speed, Captain Kirk's command chair and the size of the Enterprise as a spaceship to travel to unknown places.

One of the things adolescents might eventually appreciate is to solve conflicts with brains and not superior firepower. And we have the triumvirate friendship of Kirk, Spock and McCoy that illustrates that you can still be friends with people that feel rather differently about various issues.

Bob

 

Well perhaps part of the reason for any resurgence in TOS might be down to a number of factors including the new movies, might come some to revisit the original and of course the approaching the 50th Anniversary

 

My 5 and 7 year olds watch it with me.

We watched "The Ultimate Computer" last night, my 7-year old daughter commented as they finished installing the M-5: "I think that computer is going to be a bad idea..."

 

A pretty good take on the situation I'd say.

On the lighter side, I like the reference to Frankenstein - immediately this jumped out at me . . . ZombieTrek. Now that's something my granddaughter would watch!!!

 

Popularity doesn't equal intrinsic value; if it did, "Avatar" would be a more valuable piece of art/media than Van Gogh's "The Starry Night," which I am sure has not earned over $2Bn gross for the New York Museum of Modern Art.

 

Very cute. Kids are awesome.

When I got the season two remastered set, I was watching "The Doomsday Machine" with the new effects. My daughter storms into the room with the VHS copy I had, points to the back of the box and says "that's the Doomsday Machine!"

 

That's great.

 

Of course the only reason Abrams is relevant to this conversation is because his movies were successful (even Into Darkness). If the first one had failed it really would have been the nail in the coffin for TOS and probably all of Trek with it.

 

We'd have seen it again, but it would've gotten the "Starsky & Hutch" treatment. With Will Ferrell and Jack Black as Kirk and Spock.

 

Or maybe it would have been given to someone who actually has a little talent.

 

1) So if JJ Trek had failed it would have proven Abrams had no talent. Since it has succeeded it proves that Abrams has no talent…

2) If JJ Trek had gone down in flames that would have been the end of Star Trek for a long long loooong time. Do you think anyone is looking at The Lone Ranger right now and thinking “They just didn’t do it right, let's try again”?

 

No, neither financial success nor failure is what lets me know, at least, that Abrams is a no-talent hack. it's because fauxTrek is nothing but clunky, predictable, dumbed-down, heartless slam-bang actioners (and bad slam-bang actioners at that) that we know Abrams has no talent.

And I don't believe at all that if they had failed financially that that would have been the end of the Star Trek franchise. That's your belief. It's because they've succeeded financially that the franchise has ended--ie, nothing but fauxTrek from here on out.

The Lone Ranger is dated and old. Its position in pop culture is not even remotely analogous to the cultural depth that Star Trek occupies. Were there any Lone Ranger series after the original one, between 1957 and the movie in 2013?

Pieces of garbage sometimes do well financially. Nothing new about that phenomenon.

 

A lot of action films are predictable, the James Bond films followed more or less the exact same formula for deacdes and yet we kept going to see them.

 

Possibly I Love Lucy? Which still easy to find on cable, even though it's in black-and-white, and generates tons of mass-market merchandise aimed at general audiences: calendars, Hallmark ornaments, etc.

Clearly, Desilu is the secret ingredient to TV longevity!

 

Now you get it!

Whether you personally like the films or not, they not only succeeded financially but were generally liked by audiences and critics alike. I'm not a fan of Star Trek: First Contact, but saying the makers have no talent would just show how disconnected from reality I was. They made a movie that people and critics generally enjoy, which requires some talent whether you like it or not. You didn't like the movie? Great. Very few films are universally loved.

As far as whether or not Trek was at its end if the 2009 film was a failure? I believe it would have been the end of the road for a very, very long for serious films/TV. CBS/Paramount weren't exactly dying to spend money on Trek before Abrams came along and that was after a meager $70 million dollar film fell flat on its face. I believe a $150 million dollar plus marketing collapse would've been the end for a very, very long time.