Can paramount save their foundering Star Trek franchise?
- Thread starter kirkstheman
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Afetr we've seen a 21 season and 4 movie fleshout of the 24th century Federation, we are supposed to backtrack a century and still be able to enjoy it. That's rediculous, it's like cutting off 2 arms, your nose, an ear, and your genitalia.
I guess the way to rebuild trek is to get rid of 3 shows that had a rather large following between them and piss off the fans of those shows. It was word of mouth that built Trek into a giant. All it takes is bad word of mouth to reduce it to rubble, and no amount of primadonna directors and writers are going to be able to put it back together.
I guess the way to rebuild trek is to get rid of 3 shows that had a rather large following between them and piss off the fans of those shows. It was word of mouth that built Trek into a giant. All it takes is bad word of mouth to reduce it to rubble, and no amount of primadonna directors and writers are going to be able to put it back together.
Really good at the empty over exaggerations...
Nothing about "back tracking" precludes enjoyment but for the small minded who need to grasp for reason to hate this idea.
Sharr
Just FYI... Operations is a position that's common on at all staff levels in real military organizations.
In Army/Air Force/Marine terms, at tactical units, the "Operations Officer" is also called the S-3. S-1 is "Personnel," S-2 is "Intelligence," S-3 is "Operations," and S-4 is "Logistics." I spent most of my military career serving as an S-2 for battalion or brigade-level units.
The Operations guy is not in charge. That's the commander. And he's not the second-in-command... that's the Executive Officer (or XO). Since the S-3 is usually the next most senior person on staff, he's TYPICALLY (but not necessarily!) the next in the chain of command.
What does an operations officer do? He doesn't make the decisions, but he works out all the little details to implement the plans put forth by the guy who DOES make the decisions. Basically, he's the planner. (The S-1 takes care of all issues associated with personnel, obviously.. the S-2 deals with security, information storage and/or obtaining, interrogation, and situation briefings to the troops... and the S-4 is the "beans and bullets" guy, including all supply operations, transport operations, maintenance operations, etc).
So... basically, at the time of TMP, Kirk was the head planner for Starfleet, but had no real authority of his own. He was just taking orders from Nogura and figuring out how to make the details of Nogura's dictates work!
Not a job I'd want... no glory, just lots of tedious paper-pushing. Blech.
No wonder Kirk wanted outa there so badly!
I read history and biographies as an advocation because it enhances my vocation. Damned if FDR doesn't die at the end of every book I read about his life (as if I didn't know it going in). Damned if the North doesn't win every treatment of the Civil War I read. Still, the stories capture me.
I'm going to be as blunt in my opinion as I've been since I started posting. It's nothing personal against Sec31Mike, but the above post was the provocation: Who gives a rat's ass any more what happened in the Trek 24th century? It's been decided. The future is the 23rd century. Let's all live with it. And anyone who posts here who gives a damn about "Star Trek" any more at all should hope it works out. We all have trepidations. But what the hell is wrong with putting the best face forward and being optimistic? I thought "Star Trek" was for all points and purposes a synonym for being optimistic about the future. Sorry if this sounds coarse. I've had it.
EXACTLY CORRECT.
Stories... at least stories worth being told... are about PEOPLE.
Sec31Mike's argument is apparently based upon the setting being the whole story. But that only makes sense if you subscribe to the "we already know everything about everything" argument. That's the same argument that tries to establish that we've seen every species in the Federation, and that Kirk discovered them all, until Picard came along.
Just on ONE LITTLE PLANET, we have a million stories that are worth telling. Some are adventures, some are dramas, some are comedies... but all are, at their core, about PEOPLE. We can watch, and enjoy, and CARE ABOUT these stories even if we know that the Earth is not going to be destroyed to make way for an interstellar bypass. And if the Earth IS destroyed... that's still not the end, because the story is still about PEOPLE.
The Star Trek universe is, compared to "real life on Earth" almost infinitely larger. And we have not only a much larger playground to play in, we also have a wide range of timeframes... all of which, if handled properly, can work.
Why? Because, as I keep saying... this is all about SET DRESSING. The thing that makes the story is the PEOPLE INVOLVED. And bluntly, it's a tired, hackneyed, and LAUGHABLE premise that every Trek movie must somehow put "all life in the universe" (meaning all life that looks like it belongs at Venice Beach, at least recently!) at risk.
You just need one person... one person that the audience really, sincerely comes to care about... to make a truly great story.
Dood, if it wasn't shown on screen it didn't happen, therefor, NOTHING HAPPENED ANYWHERE except the ENTERPRISE for Kirk's whole career, and even then, only in the first three years of his 5 yr mission, once a week, for 26 weeks each year. THERE IS NO ROOM for anything else.
Oh, c'mon... you can't say that. You HAVE to allow for the Gold Key Comics to be canon too!
Wait, I thought the TV show was based on the Gold Key Comics.
You know, I'd actually pay real money to watch you cut off two arms (you have a third one?), your nose, an ear, and your bits and pieces. If anything, it would mean not having to read this inane pessimistic drivel.
Why does revisiting the TOS era mean we're getting rid of TNG/DS9/VOY? Is there an evil plot to burn all the tapes so we can never watch them again? Or is this just more hyperbole?
Posthumous word of mouth. Trek wasn't big until after it "died" the first time in 1969.
What planet are you on, pray tell? We're already at the rubble stage. Paramount cancelled Enterprise after it reached the threshold for syndication, and they shut down the movies after Nemesis flopped. If you want to talk about TRUE recycling, let's talk about how if it weren't for Abrams and his movie, the only "new" Trek coming out right now would be high-definition versions of the TOS episodes with new CGI visual effects.
No! You have to include #21. It features the secret origins of the Borg! (No really. Read it--you will be amazed!)
Personally I've never seen that much difference between the 22nd, 23rd and 24th C in terms of good or bad stories being possible in that time frame. There have been good and bad Star Trek stories set in those centuries but the credit or blame could not be ascribed to the century.
It's a whole century, with a whole galaxy or a big chunk of it as your playground. Any writer who cannot do something with a canvas that vast should be in another profession.
There indeed is a vast canvas, one that could be jumped around from at a creative writers whim even.
A half way good writer could actually add episodes to TOS, since there's no structured timeline to speak of.
And your correct its not about the Century its about being able to tell a good story.
I will add however, 24th Century Trek has become linked to a certain for lack of a better word style one that tends to telegraph ponderous speeches about how enlightened everyone is and so forth in that time period. To many this style has worn out its welcome.
Really we shouldn't expect say if a new production team to come and if they chose to deal with the 24th Century that it'd even have the same "feel" as it had in the past either. They would of course place their own spin on it.
Sharr
Well, you could do a good bit with the 24th or even the 25th, and it doesn't require the speeches. Just start with a good premise and don't cheat. Don't build a backdoor that negates the whole point of the setup, don't give them a reset button, and allow the characters to have conflicts.
If there's a blended crew (looking at you VOY), then they should have disagreements about how things should work. If its a war, you should eventually start running out of stuff (b5 actually cheated massively on this score -- ww2 breaks out in space, and they never run out of anything, not booze, not medicine, not food, not even weapons. Even when they break away from earth. In fact they got brand new uniforms and ships.).
Just like that. Don't make it easy for the characters to save the day, turn everything back to normal, and give a speech about how great the Federation is.
Beyerstein said:
You rate ST:Generations WAY too high on that graph btw.
I got 'em in the softbound collections back in the late 1970s, before TMP came out... 1976, I think. They were called "The Enterprise Logs" in their repackaged glory.
Anyone interested can check all this out HERE:
http://curtdanhauser.com/Enter.html
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