I believe we are witnessing the birth of the actual STU. Its pretty much what we all hoped at the merger.
RAMA
Unfortunately I'm not a fan.
An STU is basically, first and foremost, What Star Trek Is Doing Now.
The last timed we had an STU was in the '90s. It was called Berman Trek. And during that phase of the franchise, EVERYTHING had to be Berman Trek.
Now I'll give you the name of somebody from ST who best embodied the
opposite of that. Nick Meyer.
Meyer came in, basically said "Pfft... I don't really get most of this high-minded preachifying utopian stuff Roddenberry wants you to do. I get that this is gunboat diplomacy, the British navy, Horatio Hornblower in outer space. I'm going to give the audiences MY Star Trek."
He gave us a more analogue, more nautical and more militaristic version of Trek with No Smoking signs and fire extinguishers.
This was the perfect example (and just one example) of what would never, COULD never, happen under Rick Berman. (There was one exception; the Berman people couldn't contain Stuart Baird. But Stuart also didn't really have a vision, nor was he a great director. The studio knew it, but they also knew they were just about done spending money on ST at the time. So Berman got stuck with him).
Now Nick Meyer-style analogue/nautical/militaristic ST isn't necessarily the way. The point is to have your own vision, or
interpretation, of ST... if you would really have us believe you're qualified to be making ST.
We can't tell you what that vision would be. It's your job as a film director, TV producer or writer of either medium to tell us.
I even think Bryan Fuller had an original vision for Trek. He may have been another Nick Meyer (can't really tell). Sadly the fans crucified him for it, left him to blame for all of STD's subsequent problems (luckily that no longer works after three seasons).
Now I LOVE both TNG and DS9. Roddenberry
finally got HIS version of ST, even if it took better people than him to realize it.
Good for him. While the DS9 people both expanded on it and challenged it.
Good for them.
But the TNG movies were mostly lackluster, stylistically bland, and became increasingly focused on the
universe (or Bermantrekverse) of ST which general audiences cared little about. While the subsequent TV shows were TNG-styled copies of copies.
We already had TNG. There's nothing wrong with it, but we already had it. And I don't think we needed to see that God damn "bubble" forcefield, the Prime Directive or the TNG pseudoscience technobabble suddenly start becoming regular staples of the feature films.
But everything had to be Berman Trek. Now seemingly, everything has to be Kurtzman Trek.
On paper, I think Kurtzman gets it. He has promised every ST production will have its own identity - His "speeding bullet" comparison between STD and STP for instance (I don't even remember if that was him). Plus the experimenting with Short Treks, and the different approaches taken with the animated shows. And the impression that he's generally not for traditional inside-the-box cookie cutter molds of ST - although SNW may be an exception.
However I don't yet see that STP really is that stylistically different from STD (They've even got the same composer, which to me recalls the Berman mandate that the music be uniform and unremarkable). And neither Kurtzman (the 2009 reboot movie aside) nor Akiva Goldsman have very inspiring resumes.
Mostly, they just don't seem to want to do the work. They can't come up with coherent, meaningful stories that I would call good science fiction. Not just Kurtzman/Goldsman, but the entire Kurtzman Trek machine can't do it. After four tries they can't do it. They're signalling to you they can't do it.
(LDS seems to be the exception. I'm not sure I'm all in with what it's doing, but it appears to be doing what its producer intended).
In fact Goldsman just came up with the revelation that they have to fully plan their story, and know how it ends, before they shoot the first episode. How long has he already had to figure that one out?
They can't even design memorable-looking ships for the most part, for a franchise with a long history of producing some of the most gorgeous ships.
Kurtzman Trek is What ST Is Doing Now. And no, I don't want the feature films caught up in that.
The Kelvin Trek movies have their own problems. But Paramount has previously been open to both a Tarantino Trek plus Hawley's script (not sure whether Abrams would have wound up producing that latter). So there was always at least hope of something interesting as long as the film franchise stayed separate.
But I seriously believe if Kurtzman and Goldsman inherit it, then that's gone.
