I preferred a reboot to begin with. A reboot starts everything over from scratch while a prequel is supposed to lead into what we already know.
Yes, and that's the
problem here. That's why I wanted a prequel, not a reboot. I wanted to see unchronicled history of characters we know and love -- not alternate versions of those characters. This isn't Star Trek, so much as it's something new and different with a Star Trek label hung on it.
We'll probably end up agreeing to disagree but I'll still offer my point of view just to clarify why I have the opinion I have.
Well, thanks for taking the time. Let me reciprocate...
If it were a one-time thing, I wouldn't have a problem with a prequel, but as a long-term direction it's a problem. With Star Trek, Paramount is not interested in a one-time thing. This movie is to be the basis for continuing the movies.
If ST XI is a failure, then that's it. No story to continue.
That would be fine with me, actually. I couldn't care less where Paramount makes its money, and Trek (TOS-era Trek, in particular) has done okay for the last 17 years in prose form.
If you have a prequel series and you start with Kirk and Spock as cadets and work your way up to the point where they're both serving on the Enterprise, and the movies stop before you get to the TOS status quo, then the story you wanted to tell never gets completed.
I don't really follow you here, because I'm not sure what you mean by "the story you wanted to tell." If the story you wanted to tell is "what happened before TOS," then you've done just fine. OTOH, if your goal is "retell TOS," then yeah, you'd have a problem.
However, there's
lots of fodder for films before TOS. If I understand correctly, this film is set during Pike's era, when Kirk is still an Academy cadet—i.e., mid-2250s. If it ends with him leapfrogging from that to captaincy (in anything other than a flash-forward), I'll feel cheated. Future stories could be about, e.g, Kirk's time on the Farragut (perhaps meeting up with Pike's ENT on a mission); the handover of the ENT from Pike to Kirk (never detailed except in novels and comics, lackluster on both occasions); and of course Kirk's early days as captain, both before and after the events of WNMHGB (months on either side there, fodder for quite a few movies). (I'd
like to see more backstory on Kirk's friendship with Gary Mitchell, for example, and how that affected his early relationship with Spock.)
That'd easily get you through a half-dozen movies, and if they're still making films with this cast that far along, the (ahem) enterprise would obviously be an unqualified success.
If this type of ST XI is a success, then you go beyond the origin story and overlap into actual TOS.
Why? I've just detailed why the need to do that could easily be 10 or 15 years off.
Now you have a movie series that's actually weaving in and out of the TV series. Blending into the series is harder than simply being faithful to it and requires a lot more suspension of disbelief.
Why? It never had particularly tight episode-to-episode continuity.
Plus, what happens when you run out of the TOS era and Paramount still wants to continue making movies? Do you go onto TMP?...
Sure, why not? I don't think it's ever been firmly stated on screen, but "fanon" consensus for years now has been that Kirk and crew had another entire five-year mission after TMP. Wide-open territory there. You could just leapfrog the entire TOS era; the cast would certainly be old enough at that point.
In the future, I think Star Trek on TV and Star Trek in the movies should be kept as seperate and far away from each other as possible, so as to not dilute each other or step on each other's toes.
I just think the toe-stepping you're imagining is completely hypothetical and easily avoidable.
