Could Star Trek be Re-rebooted?

[hbquikcomjamesl]

. . . it will never line up perfectly with TOS and that's okay.

That doesn't make it a reboot. Prequels rarely do line up perfectly. ADF's Humanx Commonwealth prequels don't. The SW prequel trilogy doesn't. And that's ok, too.

Then again, TOS doesn't line up perfectly with itself, either. And if that weren't ok, then why was there a TAS, that actually took the material seriously? Why were there TOS movies? Why was there a TNG? A DS9? A VOY? An ENT, a DSC, a PIC, an LD, a PRO, or a SNW?

For that matter (and if you're a Fundamentalist, and this offends you, TOUGH!) The Bible doesn't line up perfectly with itself. Which is something that becomes very clear if you cover-to-cover it as a Lenten discipline.

 

[I am not Spock]

they tried jumping ahead into the far future, in Discovery, and people complained.
Perhaps that show should have been a far future sequel to begin with.

It seems a lot of fans don't want anything new. Give them a safe TOS prequel with Pike (I do like SNW though ); or a TNG reunion and they're happy.

Biggest risks the franchise has taken in the new era are Discovery, Prodigy (great show, but i think it sadly failed), Section 31 (oh dear, a failed experiment), and the upcoming Academy (doubling down on the Disco 32nd century timeline, we'll see how it pays off)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

they tried jumping ahead into the far future, in Discovery, and people complained.

I'm pretty sure most people who complained did so because the execution was awful, not because of the change in time period itself.

What the time period is doesn't really matter. What a lot of fans don't know is that TOS itself implied it could take place anytime from the 22nd to the 28th century. We never got a canonical century until the title card in The Wrath of Khan.

 

[Firebird]

If you want to reboot, then reboot without any ego involved. Hence '"correctly"'.

Any thing less and the criticism will be valid. This is what has already happened. Enterprise, later Star Trek: Enterprise. Too many people critiqued Enterprise to death. Very few had a valid point. It was just their opinion.

My point is taking another look at the original series and realizing that it wasn't done, yet. Why? Because they were geniuses.

Just not perfect geniuses

Human.

It's like I'm reading AI gibberish here with barely even a half of a coherent thought.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

What a lot of fans don't know is that TOS itself implied it could take place anytime from the 22nd to the 28th century. We never got a canonical century until the title card in The Wrath of Khan.

Imagine if they'd leaned into that. Made Enterprise a time ship, emphasized the time-warping effects of warp drive to have the ship and crew occupy multiple places on the timeline at once at all times, instead of having time travel be a special occurrence that only happens due to strange tech/phenomena.

 

[FredH]

I suppose at some point there pretty much has to be a real, no-connection-this-time reboot (unless the franchise just fades away entirely eventually). Probably best to combine both possibilities: the next time the franchise fades away, wait a good twenty years to let the rest of us old cranks who grew up with TOS or its reruns die out, then create a reboot. At that point, if there are still TOS purists around there’ll only be about five of them, so the producers can focus on creating a new show based on a new imagining of the basic idea, without being inundated with demands for fidelity to 1960s (or even 1990s) writing or design.

 

[fireproof78]

you want to reboot, then reboot without any ego involved. Hence '"correctly"'.

Humans will not do things "correctly" then. Ego, and pride, our such profoundly human detriments that whole philosophical schools are dedicated to dealing with the problem.

Art is all about ego and self expression.

 

[Dukhat]

That doesn't make it a reboot. Prequels rarely do line up perfectly. ADF's Humanx Commonwealth prequels don't. The SW prequel trilogy doesn't. And that's ok, too.

Then again, TOS doesn't line up perfectly with itself, either. And if that weren't ok, then why was there a TAS, that actually took the material seriously? Why were there TOS movies? Why was there a TNG? A DS9? A VOY? An ENT, a DSC, a PIC, an LD, a PRO, or a SNW?

For that matter (and if you're a Fundamentalist, and this offends you, TOUGH!) The Bible doesn't line up perfectly with itself. Which is something that becomes very clear if you cover-to-cover it as a Lenten discipline.

The only thing differentiating SNW from a reboot is the production company saying that it takes place in the same universe. Which is kind of like Christopher Nolan saying that Batman Begins takes place in the same universe as the '60's Adam West Batman TV show. It's patently absurd, but hey, if Christopher Nolan says that it does, I guess I shouldn't question it and just blindly believe him, right?

 

[HotRod]

The only thing differentiating SNW from a reboot is the production company saying that it takes place in the same universe. Which is kind of like Christopher Nolan saying that Batman Begins takes place in the same universe as the '60's Adam West Batman TV show. It's patently absurd, but hey, if Christopher Nolan says that it does, I guess I shouldn't question it and just blindly believe him, right?

Well, it's a little more then that. The show has shown direct connections with the continuity of the older series. It just looks different. That seems to the thing some people can't seem to get past.

 

[Dukhat]

Well, it's a little more then that. The show has shown direct connections with the continuity of the older series. It just looks different. That seems to the thing some people can't seem to get past.

I think there are a bit more fundamental differences than just looks, but I have little interest in beating that dead horse at the moment.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

The time period matters a lot to me, because I like to see things progressing. Lower Decks and Prodigy were set right after Nemesis so for me they felt far more important to the ongoing Star Trek story than Discovery and Strange New Worlds. A time jump further in the future is like skipping pages of the book to me. Why jump ahead, what's wrong with now?

Also designs are what you use to identify a place and a period of time. If a movie is set in '70s America I can see it right away from the cars, the haircuts, the phones they use and so on. If a film updated the cars and gave everyone smart phones to appeal to modern audiences, the sense of being in a recognisable time and place would be lost. In that case, why even set it in the past?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The time period matters a lot to me, because I like to see things progressing. Lower Decks and Prodigy were set right after Nemesis so for me they felt far more important to the ongoing Star Trek story than Discovery and Strange New Worlds. A time jump further in the future is like skipping pages of the book to me. Why jump ahead, what's wrong with now?

Also designs are what you use to identify a place and a period of time. If a movie is set in '70s America I can see it right away from the cars, the haircuts, the phones they use and so on. If a film updated the cars and gave everyone smart phones to appeal to modern audiences, the sense of being in a recognisable time and place would be lost. In that case, why even set it in the past?

This shit's not real.

A vision of the 23rd century from the perspective of 1985 will necessarily differ from a vision of the 23rd century from the perspective of 2025. The face of technology has changed noticeably over those forty years.

It's hard to look at TNG and not think of ways it's going to be getting the future wrong. All the more so for TOS.

To remain beholden to a view of the 23rd century conceived before the lunar landing is even more ridiculous than insisting that we make a movie set in 2025 but require all the characters to use landlines or pay phones instead of cell phones. The real 23rd century isn't going to look like TOS. It will either be advanced beyond our comprehension and ability to depict on television or at most caveman level primitive because we blew ourselves up.

 

[Takeru]

That doesn't make it a reboot. Prequels rarely do line up perfectly. ADF's Humanx Commonwealth prequels don't. The SW prequel trilogy doesn't. And that's ok, too.

You're missing the point, I said it's a reboot for all intents and purposes because it doesn't matter. A reboot or a prequel with a modernized look that changes some things about the characters histories and some events are the same thing except for someone at a corporation saying it's one or the other.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

The real 23rd century isn't going to look like TOS. It will either be advanced beyond our comprehension and ability to depict on television or at most caveman level primitive because we blew ourselves up.

The real 23rd century isn't going to have warp drives and starships and Vulcans and Klingons. Star Trek will never ever ever look believable. The best we can do is give it an internally consistent evolution of styles and try to avoid having the computers making ticking sounds while they're processing.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The best we can do is give it an internally consistent evolution of styles and try to avoid having the computers making ticking sounds while they're processing.

That's self-contradictory, so quite obviously far from the best we can do.

The best we can do is not have hang-ups about letting go of dated visions of the future.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The only thing differentiating SNW from a reboot is the production company saying that it takes place in the same universe. Which is kind of like Christopher Nolan saying that Batman Begins takes place in the same universe as the '60's Adam West Batman TV show. It's patently absurd, but hey, if Christopher Nolan says that it does, I guess I shouldn't question it and just blindly believe him, right?

I feel it's intended with a nudge and a wink, not as an intelligence-insulting doctrine.

And that's from someone who used to get riled up about this stuff in 2017.

 

[Takeru]

The best we can do is give it an internally consistent evolution of styles ...

No modern Star Trek should EVER look like TOS, that style is dated an inappropriate for a modern show depicting the future. A prequel must not "evolve" to that style, that would be ridiculous.

People seem to forget that the goal of TOS was to look futuristic and they extrapolated the best they could from the tech and look of the 60s. A modern show emulating that style would not look futuristic, it would look retro and that completely contradicts what Star Trek wanted to achieve.

 

[HotRod]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Strange New Worlds has done an absolutely magnificent job of updating the TOS look. Everything that we see is clearly meant to evoke The Original Series without looking like a dated television show from the 1960s. They perfectly made the show look both modern and retro.

 

[ananta]

I think at some point, if they want to continue to keep making Trek, a reboot will be necessary and inevitable. For me, SNW demonstrates the pitfalls of continuing to use the same characters when, for all intents and purposes, they end up being different characters—a product of the interpretations of different actors and different writers who perhaps understandably want to make their own stamp rather than sticking to established continuity, etc.

The problem with Trek is, let’s face it, it currently only really appeals to Trek fans and even fans are quite fragmented these days. What they need to do, and what they’ve been trying and failing to do (as evidenced by experiments like S31) is to attract new viewers, new fans, new life. At this point, having to stay within the confines of 60 years (!) worth of established lore while appealing to new viewers is…not easy. Plus, the fans are not always the best gauge of what is best for the franchise in terms of longevity and broad appeal.

I genuinely think they need to rest the show for a few years and wipe the slate clean. New era, new starship, new crew and resist the urge to rely on TOS characters.

The fans will probably hate that mind you. Is it even possible to win?

 

[The Wormhole]

Also designs are what you use to identify a place and a period of time. If a movie is set in '70s America I can see it right away from the cars, the haircuts, the phones they use and so on. If a film updated the cars and gave everyone smart phones to appeal to modern audiences, the sense of being in a recognisable time and place would be lost. In that case, why even set it in the past?

There's a difference between having something set in the 1970s and having it set in the future as interpreted in the 1970s. The actual 1970s are an objective reality and fact. It has to look a certain way. The future as seen by people in the 70s is biased by their perceptions of the world around them, and they scoffed at how dated and primitive people in the 1940s would have thought the future would look like, just as we now scoff at their ideas of the future.

And before anyone starts with "but Star Wars replicates a 1970s aesthetic in its modern productions" Star Wars can get away with that because if often acknowledged even in the OT that its technology was old and outdated. People can look at a 1970s aesthetic and accept it as old and outdated but they aren't going to look at TOS's 1960s aesthetic and accept it as cutting edge technology. Also, Star Wars takes place in a complete fantasy world, helping with the suspension of disbelief, whereas Star Trek always prides itself on being Our Future. Our technology is not going to advance to look like TOS.