Okay, then don't try to sell me insurance or power tools there. Shifting the analogy doesn't change the point, as long as we agree that Star Trek is like something with any kind of definition and identity at all.
News Discovery isn't on TV because no-one would watch it
- Thread starter Captain of the USS Averof
- Start date
Star Trek is an open concept. It was originally conceived as a"semi-anthology". Done right it has room for a variety of storytypes. If anything its become too constricted by fans and those in charge over the years. Time to open it up again.
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Star Trek: Discovery is on CBS All Access instead of broadcast television because broadcast television is dying. It's the past; web television is the way of the future.
And Star Trek needs to evolve. It cannot rely upon superficial characters and an over-abundance of plot-based storytelling and technobabble to give its audience members the false aura of depth and intelligence anymore; this is the modern Golden Age of Television, and a casual perusal of television programs of such depths and intelligence as Westworld, Game of Thrones, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, The Crown, Downton Abby, True Detective, Mr. Robot, Orange is the New Black, Sense8, Stranger Things, BoJack Horseman, Rick and Morty, Transparent, Black Mirror, The Man in the High Castle, Homeland, Veep, The Wire, Shameless, The Affair, Outlander, etc., etc., etc., shows that the old game just isn't enough.
There's too much high-quality stuff out there for Trek to just coast on pseudo-intellectualism. It has to evolve. It needs intelligence and passion.
And Star Trek needs to evolve. It cannot rely upon superficial characters and an over-abundance of plot-based storytelling and technobabble to give its audience members the false aura of depth and intelligence anymore; this is the modern Golden Age of Television, and a casual perusal of television programs of such depths and intelligence as Westworld, Game of Thrones, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, The Crown, Downton Abby, True Detective, Mr. Robot, Orange is the New Black, Sense8, Stranger Things, BoJack Horseman, Rick and Morty, Transparent, Black Mirror, The Man in the High Castle, Homeland, Veep, The Wire, Shameless, The Affair, Outlander, etc., etc., etc., shows that the old game just isn't enough.
There's too much high-quality stuff out there for Trek to just coast on pseudo-intellectualism. It has to evolve. It needs intelligence and passion.
I resemble that remark - I saw my first, first run Star Trek episode on NBC in 1969 (I was 6). It was 'Elan of Troyius'.
Been hooked on Star Trek (and Science Fiction in general, ever since.) At 53 - I enjoy seeing young people (especially women) in tight fitting space suits - fighting aliens or whatever else.
What has always cracked me up is the TNG era Star trek fans who somehow believe:
- Star Trek was NEVER about action/adventure
or
- Star Trek wasn't about pretty, young women in sexy outfits
^^^
Everytime I see someone post stuff like that I really have to ask: Did you ever actually WATCH 'STAR TREK'?
Not sure that's true. PLANET OF THE APES has been rebooted a couple of times already, at least twice theatrically and twice more if you count the TV series and Saturday morning cartoon. And yet the current cycle of APES movies is doing quite well at the moment, with a new movie due out this summer.
And, heck, we're getting a third reboot of LOST OF SPACE in the near future.
And if we're talking something like ZORRO or SUPERMAN . . . heck, they get rebooted on screen every generation or so. I'm old enough to have seen at least six live-action reboots of SUPERMAN in my lifetime.
And the first version is not always the best. It took Hollywood at least four tries to get CAPTAIN AMERICA right.
I never think of adaptations when talking about these things, they are already removed from their source material, which puts it into a different mode of thinking. (Every new version of Hamlet, or adaptation of Jane Eyre is not a reboot.)
Apes is more interesting, but from my perspective, never reached the sheer mass or worldwide popularity and influence of Trek.
A good analogy is....New Zealand changes its flag. That's interesting, and particularly important for NZ people, but on a worldwide scale...it's just interesting. If the US, or even with it diminished global profile, GB changes its flag....that's big news, and has knock on effects on others. Some small island nation, not very well known in the wider world changes its flag....it's even less of a blip than NZ, would barely make the news.
I can come up with more wobbly analogies XD
I resemble that remark - I saw my first, first run Star Trek episode on NBC in 1969 (I was 6). It was 'Elan of Troyius'.
Been hooked on Star Trek (and Science Fiction in general, ever since.) At 53 - I enjoy seeing young people (especially women) in tight fitting space suits - fighting aliens or whatever else.
What has always cracked me up is the TNG era Star trek fans who somehow believe:
- Star Trek was NEVER about action/adventure
or
- Star Trek wasn't about pretty, young women in sexy outfits
^^^
Everytime I see someone post stuff like that I really have to ask: Did you ever actually WATCH 'STAR TREK'?
Mostly we think it was about more than just those things. And we had the sexiest outfits, with a more gender balanced approach. Well...more than TOS anyway, with an allowance for the Shat losing his shirt on a regular basis.
And you know what?
We are right, it was about more than those things, even in the sixties.
I think a fair chunk of those aren't as deep and intelligent as people pretend they are, and a couple are ten or twenty years old, meaning Trek was still doing its thing during the beginning of this 'Golden Age' and influenced it. (DS9 definitely did)
In fact, many many nineties TV shows lead directly in to this 'Golden Age' particularly behind the scenes. That's aside from many of them being emperors new clothes (remember Lost? Yeah. That went well.) and the fact that it discounts things like: X files, Twin Peaks, NYPD Blue, Frasier, etc etc, that were doing pretty well twenty years ago.
Don't get me wrong...I am in that target demographic hunted by TV ATM, and it's nice to think that our generations TV is so superior to our parents TV...but really...it's not. It is nice to have something we can point to that isn't a reality TV show though. We seem to be moving past that televisual apocalypse. Also 'has tits and violence' is becoming shorthand for 'is deep and intelligent' far to often (I am not saying you use it that way, it's more of a dig at Game of Thrones in any medium.) and is clearly the new 'dark and gritty'.
Downtown Abbey doesn't have that problem, but it apparently does have a room for changing hats somewhere. I preferred the House of Eliot anyway,
It's a minefield to be sure. It really is a case by case basis. I think calling anything 'realist fiction' is a daft oxymoron, and hate the ghettoisation of literature in general, caused by snobbishness around 'my made up stuff is better than your made up stuff, particularly because yours is more made up than mine, and besides mine has death and despair and also, breasts' nonsense.
Perhaps you are unaware there are many ways to watch "tv" without watching TV. I use a half-dozen of them. Most involve streaming or media servers. Some hard drives or memory cards.
I confess I still prefer to watch TV on my TV . . . as God intended.
As opposed to my laptop.
But to get back to my original point: that's my problem, not STAR TREK's.
STAR TREK should not worry overmuch about Luddites like me. If the future of TV is streaming . . . warp speed ahead. You go where the audience is going . . . and the rest of us will just have to catch up or get left behind.
A good way around that is to use multimodal reflection sorting to bypass the electronic barrier in the TV's digital matrix circuits. It's that simple.
A 3tb hard drive is about the same size as a video cassette.
Why not make current storage, and the TV interface seem to be old school VCR equipment.
Of course fast forwarding through 9000 hours of television, even at X16 speed, to get to the last episode on the hard disk, is a touch too authentic.
Why not make current storage, and the TV interface seem to be old school VCR equipment.
Of course fast forwarding through 9000 hours of television, even at X16 speed, to get to the last episode on the hard disk, is a touch too authentic.
I resemble that remark - I saw my first, first run Star Trek episode on NBC in 1969 (I was 6). It was 'Elan of Troyius'.
Been hooked on Star Trek (and Science Fiction in general, ever since.) At 53 - I enjoy seeing young people (especially women) in tight fitting space suits - fighting aliens or whatever else.
What has always cracked me up is the TNG era Star trek fans who somehow believe:
- Star Trek was NEVER about action/adventure
or
- Star Trek wasn't about pretty, young women in sexy outfits
^^^
Everytime I see someone post stuff like that I really have to ask: Did you ever actually WATCH 'STAR TREK'?
I still remember the newspaper reporter who, while trying to get me to bash the new movies, argued "But the original TV series was non-violent, right?"
I pretty much laughed out loud. "Captain Kirk got into a fist fight in every other episode--and all those redshirts didn't exactly die of natural causes!"
And, yes, there was always more to STAR TREK than that, but it's not like TOS was ever this strictly "cerebral" symposium on current events that never indulged in thrills and excitement and good, old-fashioned space opera adventure.
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I don't think that's accurate, though that's the constant line I hear about Star Trek. But, comic books have done it all the time, so it's not a new phenomenon, and Star Trek isn't unique in that regard. There just needs to be a willingness to say that both things are Star Trek and still go through with the reboot, updating the tech and the history to fall in line with current events.
It's not like public interest isn't there, because we have "The Expanse" and "Mars" as well as Elon Musk's current challenge for a Mars' mission. I think that it could work well, but there has to be a willingness to take some risk.
But, my larger point still stands. Marketing to kids doesn't have to involve them watching the show. If Star Trek wants to continue on, then maybe it should consider reaching out just a little bit more to the younger crowd.
Marketing to kids really should involve them watching the show....those Game of Thrones figures you mentioned aren't there to be bought for children to play with.
The playmates action figures actually were for kids to play with.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. We need a new Star Trek animated series! Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels have done wonders to rekindle interest for Star Wars in the young generations.
^^^
No, it really wasn't. GR ALWAYS oversold the 'social commentary' aspect of the original Star Trek IMO - and he did it because it played well with the fans of the show, Was there social commentary? Yep. Was it in every episode or a focal point of every episode? Honestly no. Over the decades I think fans have tried to project a lot of: "...yes, it was always cerebral and socially relevent...ALWAYS!..."
But to be honest The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits were often more obvious in regard to 'social commentary' then Star Trek (and the Irwin Allen stuff at the time - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost In Space, Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants were pretty much just there to entertain, and not say much socially.)
As for TNG, at times I thought it tried way to hard to be socially relevent at times, and went overboard. TOS did that a few times - an example would be the episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" <--- That episode was about as subtle in what it had to say socially as a Mack Truck.
^^^
No, it really wasn't. GR ALWAYS oversold the 'social commentary' aspect of the original Star Trek IMO - and he did it because it played well with the fans of the show, Was there social commentary? Yep. Was it in every episode or a focal point of every episode? Honestly no. Over the decades I think fans have tried to project a lot of: "...yes, it was always cerebral and socially relevent...ALWAYS!..."
But to be honest The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits were often more obvious in regard to 'social commentary' then Star Trek (and the Irwin Allen stuff at the time - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost In Space, Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants were pretty much just there to entertain, and not say much socially.)
As for TNG, at times I thought it tried way to hard to be socially relevent at times, and went overboard. TOS did that a few times - an example would be the episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" <--- That episode was about as subtle in what it had to say socially as a Mack Truck.
We're there a lot of episodes just about sexy outfits and fistfights in the sand then?
(Hey, I never said any generation of Trek was subtle...)
I have always been against the idea of animated Trek...but having recently watched TAS and seeing how my little one loves it, and loves the animated Star Wars more than the films (at this point, so do I) maybe I was wrong, maybe an animated Trek would work now. I do t think the animated Trek mooted in the nineties would...it was a bad idea, too much lie, something daft like highlander the animated series was. Decent artwork (get a Japanese studio to head it, production I.G or the guys who did God Eater, or the Square Enix guys) and it could be an amazing thing. I wouldn't like full CG..Rebels just about gets a pass, but even bits of clone wars look late 90s janky still.
That sounds great in theory, but in practice, Star Trek can't be an undefined mix of everything in the multiverse. It's like boldly going where no one has gone before. It's a great mission statement. In practice, captains choose a direction and orient themselves based on where they've been. That leaves plenty of room for discovery (sorry, pun intended). And likewise there are plenty of risks Discovery can take, plenty of fan wishlists it can ignore, and plenty of my personal expectations it can happily upend while remaining recognizably Star Trek. If not, there's no reason to call it Star Trek.
On the other hand, one of the great things about STAR TREK is that the format is flexible enough to allow for lots of different kinds of stories: morality tales, political allegories, courtroom dramas, murder mysteries, war stories, spy stories, love stories, even the occasional out-and-out farce . . . all within a single season, conceivably. It's a big tent.
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