A Reflection: Was "No Trek" better than "Bad Trek"?
- Thread starter Newspaper Taxi
- Start date
Nope. Demonstrably and endlessly true.
I was of the opinion then, and I still am of the opinion, that no Trek is better than bad Trek.
I think poorly written Trek does no favors to the future of the fan base. It is essential that new viewers come in all the time...and a poorly written 'first show' can easily make a new viewer think "Do I REALLY want to commit the time necessary to view 700 episodes of THIS shit???"
The thing is though, that all of it COULD have been good.
B&B got cocky, lazy, cheap and arrogant...and were under the mistaken impression that if they TOLD us it was good, we would, like mindless sheep, believe every world they said out of hand.
But they were wrong.
The last couple of seasons of VOY began the downhill slide, as B&B got lazy and started relying more on boobs than on good storylines for ALL the characters in order to hold the audience.
The first season of ENT wasn't really terrible. But they should have taken the show's downturn as a queue to either stop being lazy and kick the creative juices into high gear...or hire someone who WOULD kick it into high gear.
But they were too proud and too cheap for that...and refused to admit their mistake until it was too late, and ENT could not recover. Manny Coto was a great idea, and did a great job...but thanks to B&B's egos...and their assumption that Trek fans were gullible and stupid...it was too little, too late.
That "We are all very pleased" crap, combined with that "This is the first arc-based Trek show!" crap completely lost me. It was insulting to my intelligence. I mean, I was born at night, but not LAST night! 
I haven't minded the past couple of years 'off' in the slightest. I am hopeful that with some new blood involved - and blood that does NOT take the fanbase for granted - things will improve with the next film.
I think poorly written Trek does no favors to the future of the fan base. It is essential that new viewers come in all the time...and a poorly written 'first show' can easily make a new viewer think "Do I REALLY want to commit the time necessary to view 700 episodes of THIS shit???"
The thing is though, that all of it COULD have been good.
B&B got cocky, lazy, cheap and arrogant...and were under the mistaken impression that if they TOLD us it was good, we would, like mindless sheep, believe every world they said out of hand.
But they were wrong.
The last couple of seasons of VOY began the downhill slide, as B&B got lazy and started relying more on boobs than on good storylines for ALL the characters in order to hold the audience.
The first season of ENT wasn't really terrible. But they should have taken the show's downturn as a queue to either stop being lazy and kick the creative juices into high gear...or hire someone who WOULD kick it into high gear.
But they were too proud and too cheap for that...and refused to admit their mistake until it was too late, and ENT could not recover. Manny Coto was a great idea, and did a great job...but thanks to B&B's egos...and their assumption that Trek fans were gullible and stupid...it was too little, too late.
That "We are all very pleased" crap, combined with that "This is the first arc-based Trek show!" crap completely lost me. It was insulting to my intelligence. I mean, I was born at night, but not LAST night! I haven't minded the past couple of years 'off' in the slightest. I am hopeful that with some new blood involved - and blood that does NOT take the fanbase for granted - things will improve with the next film.
Well.. not a lot of music. But just to spite you, I'm going to put on Karl Jenkins.
And as far as hating recent stuff goes... nah, not at all. Okay, I'm lukewarm on a lot of Star Trek produced this millenium. But it also gave me A Scanner Darkly and 2046. Science fiction wise, it's doing pretty good.
Basically, it's a culminative thing. You name any decade of the past century and in that decade a lot of forgettable material was churned out on film, and (from the 1950s on) on TV. But nobody remembers those. We remember all the classics, and there's a lot of them. A few decades from now, people talking about film and TV in the '00s will bring up a handful of similar names.
So when people like old things, they have decades - or centuries (depending on the art form) of classics to chose from that have piled up. The same amount of classics are being produced as we speak, at the same rate - in addition to the large amount of mediocre and atrocious material that also comes out. That's what gives the impression that things were better in the past then they used to be, which is inaccurate.
Probably because it was an adaption of a successful novel. I have no hard facts, but I've been given the impression Jeff Lindsay's Darkly Dreaming Dexter was pretty well recieved.
See, everybody knows the correct cut-off is 1988.
If I was offered 7 more seasons of TOS, of the same quality as the 3rd season, I'd say 'Yes' to it without hesitation. The 3rd season wasn't the best one, but I still enjoyed it, and I enjoyed Voyager and Enterprise as well. So for me, bad Trek on television as we've had it is strongly preferable to no Trek on television.
Sure, that's your philosophy, and it works for you.
However, people in this thread are saying that they don't like "bad/new Trek" and that if "bad Trek" keeps getting made then it soils the collective memory of "old/good Trek". ie. They don't want more "bad Trek" made. At all.
But what about fans who are perfectly happy with ST episodes and movies that other fans have deemed "bad"? If no more is allowed to be made, to satisfy one group's needs, why should other fans be denied new instalments of their favourite series/movie?
L
Lord Garth
Guest
That's fine. There's no universal answer to this.
I liked DS9 and was on the fence about VOY until the fifth season, so I stopped reguarly watching in 1999 and none of this affected me. Even afterwards, I was never one of those people screaming "Cancel Voyager!" or "Cancel Enterprise!", or any of that crap; and largely stayed out of those forums. So, from my POV, this is academic.
There isn't a single Trek series out there that didn't have lousy episodes mixed in with the good and the great. And yet, no matter what series we're talking about, everyone of them has its die-hard fans and die-hard detractors. So what?
Every series also has added to the richness of the Trekverse. That's what I love about Star Trek.
I've watched every episode of every live-action series (and several from TAS) and every film. Some episodes had me rolling my eyes; some left me bored to tears. One even left me livid. But the vast majority entertained me, made me laugh, or cry or think, and sometimes all three.
Is No Trek better than Bad Trek?
No.
Because No Trek means we're also not getting Good Trek.
Every series also has added to the richness of the Trekverse. That's what I love about Star Trek.
I've watched every episode of every live-action series (and several from TAS) and every film. Some episodes had me rolling my eyes; some left me bored to tears. One even left me livid. But the vast majority entertained me, made me laugh, or cry or think, and sometimes all three.
Is No Trek better than Bad Trek?
No.
Because No Trek means we're also not getting Good Trek.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
No reason at all. But my view of this thread is that the OP wanted some debate, and that is (in part) what he/she got. I'm really not saying we should deprive somebody else of something I consider crap, I'm only saying I wouldn't watch it. The only folks doing any denying or depriving are the ones who have the wherewithal to MAKE Trek.
It just occured to me that there might be another angle to this that you're taking that I didn't see when writing the above. Are you saying that if enough "no trek" people vote with their wallets in anticipation of new trek being bad, that there won't be ANY new trek? I don't think the fanbase will decide profitability on this new movie, and I damn well KNOW that I am not winning over converts with my point of view, so I doubt that is a factor either.
Oh, that one. I may have seen it only once or twice. Well, we were speaking of series in general, and that one had one of the "Bs" as creator and producer. TOS had a number of stinkers, as did the other series.
If you change into a Salamander, isn't that devolving?
Aside from the infamous Stewey, who in spite of making his unpopular opinions known with respect tried hard to find reasons to hate Enterprise, I haven't come across very many of those types, even here. Towards the later end of Enterprise's run, some of the most critical people weren't bashers, but the fans themselves who finally got a taste of what this show should have been from the beginning. TATV was the final nail in the coffin between fans and B&B; I doubt anyone would have been that upset by such a finale a year before, but after the leaps and bounds in character and story development, it stuck out even more like a sore thumb.
Long story short, no Trek is better than bad Trek. And this is not because I'm an anal retentive nerd who won't accept anything that doesn't meet with my five thousand page Trek bible, or because I sit with a Trekcyclopedia looking for continuity errors cross-series. It's not because I found Enterprise to be horrid, as it was the series that brought me into Trek. But after seeing the real character drama and development withing DS9 and TNG (to a lesser degree), I could understand why people came down so hard on ENT. We need more Trek along the lines of TNG/DS9, and less of the silly fanboy rubbish of ENT.
This is my very first post here at TrekBBS. I wonder if it'll be around for a while.
My response is simply: Yes. I would definitely prefer a lack of Trek to some writer (*cough*Braga*cough*) taking excessive liberties with the franchise to prove a point (*cough*Threshold*cough*). I missed the first three seasons of Enterprise because I felt this was a prime example of "Bad Trek" and then they had to go and make me eat those words when they did the Mirror Universe two-parter near the end of the fourth season.
Looking forward to having more discussions on Trek here at the BBS.
MDg
My response is simply: Yes. I would definitely prefer a lack of Trek to some writer (*cough*Braga*cough*) taking excessive liberties with the franchise to prove a point (*cough*Threshold*cough*). I missed the first three seasons of Enterprise because I felt this was a prime example of "Bad Trek" and then they had to go and make me eat those words when they did the Mirror Universe two-parter near the end of the fourth season.
Looking forward to having more discussions on Trek here at the BBS.
MDg
Boom boom. Acka lacka lacka boom. Boom boom. Acka lacka boom boom.
To me "no Trek" and "bad Trek" are essentially the same thing. If a show is bad, then I won't watch it. If a show doesn't exist, then I won't watch it.
If other people are happy watching what they dislike and complaining about it all the way, then I suppose bad Trek is better than no Trek.
If other people are happy watching what they dislike and complaining about it all the way, then I suppose bad Trek is better than no Trek.
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