I'm sure Paramount wants to reinvigorate
Star Trek as a premium franchise. And historically that has meant both TV and movies, so I think a return to TV is definitely in the future. In the past, the TV and movie franchises have supported each other, which I'm sure is a lovely, profit-generating situation that Paramount would love to re-establish.
The hold-up would be the stigma of TV movies being less than premium. Maybe a miniseries as a backdoor pilot to a TV series would work.
And whatever happens, it will key off the success of
Star Trek XI and either use those characters and actors, or at the very least, the same timeframe and characters introduced in the movies.
Nobody should expect anything to do with
TNG, DS9, VOY or
ENT. The last thing Paramount wants to do is confuse the audience about what is meant by "Star Trek." They need to communicate very clearly that it is the successful re-launch of the franchise and regardless of whether we like any of those other series, they have all been stamped as failures and nobody at Paramount wants anything to do with them anymore, for TV or movies.
I'm as big a Niner as anyone, but if I were running the franchise, I'd do exactly what I've described. It is the best shot
Star Trek has of being reinvigorated, in terms of general strategy. The rest of it is up to Abrams & co to come up with something worthwhile, because without that, the whole strategy will collapse.
Why doesn't the sci-fi channel do what is expected of them, and make more great sci-fi.
Because they can make plenty of money producing crap movies and laughable "reality TV" series. What's expected of them (by the shareholders) is that they make money. The expectations of the people holding the purse strings - shareholders - are the only expectations they give a frak about. They have no premium franchises worth nurturing (well,
BSG, sorta - but the ratings aren't so hot) and they'd never get their paws on
Star Trek because Paramount wants that for themselves.
though you'd think with a property like Star Trek they'd be trying to make money off of it all the time.
A mindless, greedy scramble to make money indiscriminately is what has hurt
Star Trek and gotten it into the mess it's in now. The responsible approach is to come up with a smart strategy to deliver quality product and a very focused message of what
Star Trek is, that does not confuse the audience by throwing multiple types of
Star Trek at them.
Right now, the job is to rebuild the brand. It needs to be: Kirk, Spock,
Enterprise. Nothing confusing or off-putting. One era, one general cast of characters, one tone, one (very premium quality) approach. And they must be very careful what they greenlight because the only thing the
Star Trek brand means to the general audience right now is "some old boring crap nobody cool wants to watch."
Star Trek is fortunate to be still famous enough that Paramount has a motive to take the high road. If they pull this job off right, they have the potential for a very well-regarded franchise that they can make plenty of money from. If it had less cachet, then the usual "just milk it and throw it in the trash" logic might apply.
