A TNG Animated Series
- Thread starter Mojochi
- Start date
Alright Christopher, as the author of a Titan novel, can you please pitch this to Paramount? With the Star Trek movie one of the hottest properties of last year it seems an ideal time to make a tie-in show along the lines of the Iron Man animated series or the Batman animated series (I cite these examples of successful movie tie-ins that are only tangentially related to their source material).
Well, first off, I think you're greatly overestimating how much attention the studio pays to the tie-in novelists. Second, these days it's CBS that owns the TV rights to Star Trek.
I agree that a strong pitch should be made to CBS for a Trek animated series. I have long thought that Frakes and Burton would be the right people to spearhead such an endeavor, as they have both produced and directed properties aimed at a young audience, and have remained close to their Trek roots.
I'm sure CBS is casting around for ways to make money from the franchise. I'm sure you can find someone who knows someone who can get your foot in the door. You've got the stories, you've got access to prelim images, you've got the pitch... sure, it'll never work, but why not give it a try? You're our only hope! Go for it.
Actually, of the various authors who've written for the Titan crew, I'm one of the ones with the fewest Hollywood connections. Andy Mangels produces DVDs, James Swallow sold two story premises to Voyager, and David Mack (of the Destiny trilogy) sold one screenplay and one story premise to DS9.
And the "animated Titan" images are the work of Geoffrey Thorne, not me.
And the "animated Titan" images are the work of Geoffrey Thorne, not me.
I had someone comment that this thread might be better suited to the Future of Trek forum.
Personally, I'm easy either way. If you like it here, that's cool. If you want it scooted over to FoT, let me know and it will be made so.
(oh, and a TNG animated series could rock, big time)
Yeah, those guys sound like good resources for working up a pitch. Give them a call.
As much as I love the TNG crew and era, wouldn't it make more sense to feature the original crew since the new JJ Abrams movie is what's fresh in people's minds? Wouldn't that be easier to sell?
It could either be done in the style of TOS. Or it could be made to resemble the new movie. Or it could be some sort of a hybrid between the two. Since it's an animated show it wouldn't be obligated to follow canon, so there would be a lot of room for the show grow creatively.
I just think Kirk, Spock, etc. is the way to go.
It could either be done in the style of TOS. Or it could be made to resemble the new movie. Or it could be some sort of a hybrid between the two. Since it's an animated show it wouldn't be obligated to follow canon, so there would be a lot of room for the show grow creatively.
I just think Kirk, Spock, etc. is the way to go.
Why would you say that? Every prior filmed Trek production, regardless of format, has presumed itself to be part of the canon. True, Roddenberry did attempt to "decanonize" the animated series 15 years after the fact, but many episodes made after Roddenberry's death ignored that attempt and acknowledged elements of TAS anyway, so that memo has been a dead letter for a long time. And it certainly didn't reflect the intentions of the makers of TAS, since the concept of there even being a distinction between "canon" and "not canon" didn't really exist until Roddenberry stirred things up with that memo many years later. TAS was just more Star Trek, as authentic a continuation as any animated sequel to a live-action show had ever been up to that point (or even since, probably).
True, as a general rule, animated shows based on live-action films and shows have been free to go in their own directions without being bound by exact continuity, but that's generally true of any TV adaptation of a film. And ST has generally been an exception to that pattern, treating every filmed incarnation as part of a(n allegedly) consistent whole. Regardless of format, it would be quite a departure for any new Trek TV series to be overtly divorced from canon. Heck, if even Abrams and his "Supreme Court" were so hesitant to break with tradition that they went out of their way to define their reboot as an alternate timeline within the same reality, I'm not sure the makers of an animated ST show would dare to break from established canon altogether, for fear of alienating the fanbase.
I just meant stylistically and visually. I'm not saying that they should make Spock a woman or turn Scotty gay (not that I have a problem with the idea of a gay character in Star Trek). Stay true to the source material but be free to go their own way. Maybe perhaps set it in it's own timeline.
^Well, yes, but as J. J. Abrams proved, a live-action production has just as much freedom to go its own way. It's the assumption that animated productions in particular are somehow a special case that I'm refuting.
If someone can pull the franchise rights out of CBS's/Paramount Pictures gollum-like claws, maybe there's something there.
The perceived failure of Enterprise will likely never see Trek returning to TV or another broadcast medium in any way that does not "fatigue" the franchise.
The perceived failure of Enterprise will likely never see Trek returning to TV or another broadcast medium in any way that does not "fatigue" the franchise.
^Surely the success of the new movie has exposed all the "franchise fatigue" arguments as bogus. All it took to revive the franchise was a fresh vision from the filmmakers and a strong marketing push from the studio. And when a studio has a successful film franchise, it's natural enough for them to develop a TV series to try to build on that success. And often it's an animated series.
But they are. Aside from The Clone Wars, how many animated spin-offs of live-action shows were literally obligated to stink with canon? Batman, Ghostbusters, etc., they all went in their own direction. And though I'm sure many adults would tune in to an animated Trek, the belief with the suits is that it's a kid's show and would be written and marketed as such. Having to follow 700+ hours of continuity for an animated show would be daunting.
By the way, though it's been awhile since I read it, I remember really enjoying "Ex Machina". I just realized that you wrote that book and wanted to let you know. I kinda feel weird saying that since we're bickering.
Would love to see one. I'd bring back Tasha Yar as well as a hot-shot helm officer.
That's the wrong question to ask. How many live-action adaptations of movies have been obliged to stick with the same canon? Virtually none. They almost always make changes in order to make the concept work better as a series, and often directly contradict or ignore elements from the movie. The same goes for live-action or animated adaptations of comic books. And while some live-action spinoffs or sequels of other live-action shows are clearly in the same continuity, there are others that make changes or go in their own independent directions. (For instance, a failed Young MacGyver pilot from a few years back contradicted the original series by having the main character be MacGyver's nephew, even though MacGyver was an only child.) So this isn't a property of animated shows in particular, it's a property of adaptations in general. It's a mistake to engage in "profiling" here, to assume it's a matter of animation being fundamentally different from live action.
(Besides, "obligated to stick with canon" is a meaningless phrase. That's not how canon works. The creators of an ongoing series or franchise are always free to change it however they feel like; look at Dallas when they brought back Bobby Ewing. There is no obligation to stay consistent with the past. Canon is simply the pretense of a consistent universe, not the reality of one.)
But as I said, Star Trek has historically been an exception to that pattern. All its shows and movies have operated under the assumption that they represent a consistent continuity, even to the extent of treating the new film's alternate timeline as an offshoot of that continuity. This is what the fans are used to, it's what they expect, and therefore I think the makers of any new Trek show, regardless of its method of production, might feel the same obligation to treat itself as part of the same overall continuity. There's certainly no "law" saying that an animated show has to go its own way. If the producers of an animated Trek show wanted to treat it as part of the same consistent universe, they certainly wouldn't be forbidden from doing so. Of course, if some later producer decided to ignore the animated series, as Roddenberry did with TAS, then that would decanonize it, but frankly there's nothing preventing a future producer from doing the same with any live-action Trek series or movie. ST V is pretty much treated as apocryphal, since the whole premise of Voyager contradicts that film's assumptions about the travel time to the center of the galaxy. So again, it's not about animation.
Actually The Real Ghostbusters did an excellent job of presenting itself as a faithful continuation and expansion of the film's universe. It even justified the minor inconsistencies by establishing that the movie we saw was a dramatization of the first adventure of the "real" Ghostbusters. However, when the second movie came along a few years later, it chose to disregard the animated series. Like I said, there's nothing to prevent someone from doing that after the fact. But that doesn't mean the makers of the animated show chose from the beginning to go a separate route. (And later seasons of The Real Ghostbusters likewise chose to acknowledge the continuity of Ghostbusters 2, despite the discrepancies with its own earlier seasons. The show was trying to be compatible with the films, as much as the films would allow.)
I'd also make a case for Godzilla: The Series, the animated followup to the Devlin/Emmerich film. It did an excellent job of picking up right where the movie left off. I think the only inconsistency is a slight discrepancy in timing between the events shown in the final scenes of the movie and those shown in the pilot of the series, but it can easily be chalked up to an editorial choice. As far as I could tell, the continuities were completely compatible, and the series even had two of the movie's cast members reprising their roles. And since there was no film sequel, there was never a chance for it to be contradicted.
How is that relevant? Lots of animated kids' shows today are more intelligently written than a lot of "adult" entertainment. And lots of them, notably shows like Batman: The Brave and the Bold and The Spectacular Spider-Man, are written on the basis of detailed, geeky knowledge of and tribute to extremely large and elaborate continuities. Then there's something like Gargoyles which drew upon a broad and deep range of global mythology and history, even to the point of depicting Macbeth and Duncan more accurately than Shakespeare did (though in Shakespeare's defense, he was ordered to make Macbeth the villain because his monarch was a descendant of Duncan). Again you're making the mistake of assuming that animation is somehow fundamentally different from live action. Regardless of how differently they're perceived and marketed, there are increasingly many writers who work in both fields or migrate from one to the other.
Have you read the proposal and script that are available online for the failed Star Trek: Final Frontier animated series that was in development a few years back? That show would've been set in the canon continuity, and it demonstrated a clear familiarity with existing Trek canon. You can read all about it here: http://zeroroom.squarespace.com/
I agree with all of Chris' comments, but also would like to add that a lot of film companies want tie-in material like animated shows, but they often don't like an on-TV property that is too tied to the on-silver-screen property- probably for a reason similar to the reason that the novels linked to the new Trek film were pushed back- there is too much room for contradiction.
Another good example of this is Smallville- there are frequent examples where the makers want to reference DC heroes but are prevented by the film department because they don't want to cross-contaminate that property while it is in consideration for the big screen.
A Titan series hits a couple of sweet spots:
1. It is sufficiently removed from the new Trek movie continuity that it won't interfere with anything from that series.
2. It is sufficiently linked with the existing TNG continuity that old-school fans will be interested in checking it out (and don't give me that 'but animated is for kids...' guff, that was old when people said it about TAS and even older when people said it about the animated Batman series)
3. It already has an existing fanbase and tie-in novels!
4. If it is part of the overall Trek continuity, it will almost guarantee profitability in the long run via DVD sales to hardcore Trek completists.
As I said: someone needs to get on this.
As much a I appreciate the sentiment, the fact is that point 3) is pretty much meaningless. The typical reader base for tie-in novels is something like one percent of the audience for the TV series or film being tied into. And that's for Trek Lit as a whole; the percentage that's specifically into Titan is probably significantly smaller. So that existing fanbase would probably not be a statistically significant contribution to the potential audience base for a television series, even an animated one.
Frankly, I suspect that if a TV series were to be based on a Trek tie-in, it would more likely be based on Star Trek Online, which already has over a million subscribers, a far greater number than the readership of the Titan novels. Those are the kind of audience figures that could potentially support a TV series. And the STO continuity is fundamentally incompatible with the novel continuity, so a show based on the novels would probably confuse the STO fanbase. As a creator heavily invested in the novel continuity, I wish it could be different, but that's the way it is. What we novelists do is a small sidebar of the franchise, appealing to a specific niche of the fanbase.
I'm not smart enough to win this argument. You win. I'm going to go and drink a glass of chocolate milk and climb under a rock and re-think my life.
