Do fans want the prime timeline back? Part 2: Poll edition.

[BillJ]

Re: shocking or violent scenes in Trek -- For my money, nothing Abrams' Trek has done thus far comes even close to Commander Sonak's agonized squealing as the transporter forms him into a twisted writhing mass.

I'd add in several things from The Wrath of Khan: Terrell's suicide, the Ceti eel coming out of Chekov's ear and one of the Enterprise crew being turned into a human torch when Reliant hits it in the torpedo bay.

In my opinion, The Wrath of Khan is the most graphically violent film in the series.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: shocking or violent scenes in Trek -- For my money, nothing Abrams' Trek has done thus far comes even close to Commander Sonak's agonized squealing as the transporter forms him into a twisted writhing mass.

I thought that the chilling screams came from the human female accompanying Sonak.

 

[iPadCary]

It's not that I want the timeline back.
The timeline's fine.
This is only just the era of Star Trek that hasn't been covered yet:
the time between ENT & TOS, aka "The Academy Days".

No, the timeline's not at issue.
It's the time period that I want back, Trek now:
Picard & B-4, Riker's new ship, something like that.
Even another leap forward alá the jump from TOS to TNG would be interesting,
with a whole new cast of interesting, beloved & well thought-out characters.

I care nary a fig for the academy days.
If they'd only go back to what's presently happening with Trek,
I'd be happy with that.
That no-talent buffoon Abrams could direct & I wouldn't mind,
just, again, as long as it deals with picking up at
precisely where we left off in the "Star Trek: TNG/DS9/VOG" story.

 

[Dix]

Prime timeline, of course. A new crew, new ship, new challenges in the future. Perhaps 700 years in the future after TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY. The crew would not just explore our own galaxy, but other galaxies as well. Where No Man Has Gone Before... Remember? And they would probably not just explore space but time as well. That would be exciting.

 

[captainkirk]

They won't go back to the Prime universe because they can't. New fans are usually only familiar with the new universe. They don't want to confuse the audience. Besides, I think the new universe has more interesting possibilities.

 

[YARN]

I'm more interested in a hard reboot of TOS.

Link it more closely to actual history (post 1967) and consider where present technologies are taking us (e.g., would you really have person manually loading a torpedo?).

Put the story back into exploration made. Trek is most interesting when it is at the edge of the human frontier (e.g., not hopelessly cast adrift like Voyager and not stuck in one place like DS9). The Enterprise is the equivalent of a ship on a long voyage in the age of the fighting sail. Just close enough to command to get directives. Far enough away to have to solve her own problems.

Keep the magic tech to a minimum (e.g., you need warp drive and anti-gravity, but you don't need much more). Don't solve every problem by readjusting the deflector dish. Use more ingenuity in developing mundane solutions to narrative problems. (i.e., limit the tech-ex-machina).

 

[T'Girl]

e.g., would you really have person manually loading a torpedo?

Given the occasional problems they have with their computers, malfunctions and various take-overs, maybe having the manual or semi-manual loading make sense. No?

The Enterprise is the equivalent of a ship on a long voyage in the age of the fighting sail. Just close enough to command to get directives. Far enough away to have to solve her own problems.

That perfectly sums up what the theme of Star Trek always should be.

 

[2takesfrakes]

I was under the impression that Paramount kept every prop in storage somewhere. That even the sets were put into $afe-keeping. If CBS wants a cheap STAR TREK show, couldn't they use that moth-eaten flattage and make a mini-series with it? Or, if they really want to pinch their pennies, maybe have some of the crew on a no-name STARFLEET vessel accidentally transwarp onto a planet that's very Earth-like, in most respects. Unable to contact the fleet, their Survival Training is tested to the limit ...

 

[Hober Mallow]

IIRC, the sets, which had been used in nearly every Trek incarnation since TMP, were torn down following ENT and many of the props were auctioned off.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

They won't go back to the Prime universe because they can't. New fans are usually only familiar with the new universe. They don't want to confuse the audience. Besides, I think the new universe has more interesting possibilities.

Many have argued here that the casual fans don't care for continuity or legacy or any crap. If true, the casual fans don't differentiate between the Trek universe and the alternative canon.

 

[Taranis]

I'm more interested in a hard reboot of TOS.

Link it more closely to actual history (post 1967) and consider where present technologies are taking us (e.g., would you really have person manually loading a torpedo?).

Put the story back into exploration made. Trek is most interesting when it is at the edge of the human frontier (e.g., not hopelessly cast adrift like Voyager and not stuck in one place like DS9). The Enterprise is the equivalent of a ship on a long voyage in the age of the fighting sail. Just close enough to command to get directives. Far enough away to have to solve her own problems.

Keep the magic tech to a minimum (e.g., you need warp drive and anti-gravity, but you don't need much more). Don't solve every problem by readjusting the deflector dish. Use more ingenuity in developing mundane solutions to narrative problems. (i.e., limit the tech-ex-machina).

what you said.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Put the story back into exploration made. Trek is most interesting when it is at the edge of the human frontier (e.g., not hopelessly cast adrift like Voyager and not stuck in one place like DS9). The Enterprise is the equivalent of a ship on a long voyage in the age of the fighting sail. Just close enough to command to get directives. Far enough away to have to solve her own problems.

Except that wasn't TOS.

They weren't always exploring and they weren't always too far from ained about, outposts, Federation member planets, and Federation colonies.

I mean a lot of the time they were doing other Space Navy stuff like moving crap from one Starbase/planet to another, making sure some scientists or colonist weren't dead or injured or whatever since the last time Starfleet sent someone to the place, or answering distress calls.

I mean hell the one season exploration took focus was the third one as those complained about planet of the week episodes.

I will never get why people always seem to think TOS was so exploration focused when it really wasn't.

 

[Greg Cox]

I will never get why people always seem to think TOS was so exploration focused when it really wasn't.

It's the opening spiel, probably. "Boldly going" and so forth.

But, yeah, one of the great things about TOS was that the format was flexible enough to encompass a wide variety of missions: scientific, diplomatic, military, espionage, emergency relief, etc. Which allowed the show to do everything from courtroom dramas to horror stories to morality plays to comedies and so on . . . .

 

[YARN]

Except that wasn't TOS.

Wasn't it?

They weren't always exploring and they weren't always too far from ained about, outposts, Federation member planets, and Federation colonies.

So because they weren't "always exploring," the show was not, in fact, premised on the notion of a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds? For the show to really be about a space explorarion vessel, 100% of the episodes would have to center on exploration?

Raise the bar high enough, I suppose, and you can disprove almost any claim. But why, one must ask, ought we raise the bar so high?

I mean a lot of the time they were doing other Space Navy stuff like moving crap from one Starbase/planet to another, making sure some scientists or colonist weren't dead or injured or whatever since the last time Starfleet sent someone to the place, or answering distress calls.

Right. They're so far out there that the Enterprise has to serve as the occasional diplomatic envoy, or mule (moving drugs and important people around). It is precisely because there are no other ships around to do it that the Enterprise is called to perform these occasional tasks. She is still on the frontier doing frontier work. She is Starfleet's sole agent and representative on most of these occasions.

Consider what a big deal it was when they enountered another Starship. We almost never saw the Enterprise as part of a strike force or convoy of ships. She was on her own, only occasionally meeting up with other ships.

I will never get why people always seem to think TOS was so exploration focused when it really wasn't.

This is an empirical question and we are in the presence of those who should know. How many TOS episodes involved exploration?

At any rate, I am not making the argument that Trek should be 100% exploration, but rather that the Enterprise should be in exploration mode on the frontier, a mode which involves being, in essence, the representative of a far-off colonial power, and therefore involves the tasks you describe above.

 

[Taranis]

Put the story back into exploration made. Trek is most interesting when it is at the edge of the human frontier (e.g., not hopelessly cast adrift like Voyager and not stuck in one place like DS9). The Enterprise is the equivalent of a ship on a long voyage in the age of the fighting sail. Just close enough to command to get directives. Far enough away to have to solve her own problems.

Except that wasn't TOS.

They weren't always exploring and they weren't always too far from ained about, outposts, Federation member planets, and Federation colonies.

I mean a lot of the time they were doing other Space Navy stuff like moving crap from one Starbase/planet to another, making sure some scientists or colonist weren't dead or injured or whatever since the last time Starfleet sent someone to the place, or answering distress calls.

I mean hell the one season exploration took focus was the third one as those complained about planet of the week episodes.

I will never get why people always seem to think TOS was so exploration focused when it really wasn't.

I think because that's how it felt most of the time
and mostly they where a few hours to a few weeks communication distance from some star-base
or another outpost,

it did have a greater sense of been out there and that a great distance lay between in most of the episodes, granted not all depending on the script demands .

As for moving stuff (crap) between bases/Outposts, They had no replicator's, so they had too assist these small outposts or another cargo ship. (Antares in Charlie X).

I think it comes down to what you take from the show.

One of my pet dislikes for TNG as much as I still enjoyed it, was that Starfleet was too easy to contact. never any really sense of delay..

messages taking weeks for round trip etc. which was the point I think YARN was making. TOS has a greater sense of been far away from any help.

I could be wrong

 

[C.E. Evans]

Exploration was (and is) just an excuse for our heroes to be wandering out there otherwise aimlessly from sector to sector, but it also allows the series to tell a wide variety of other stories--including those set well within the Federation--which both TOS and TNG took full advantage of. But exploration isn't limited to just strange new worlds and civilizations to those crews, though--we viewers are also taken along to see things that are commonplace to them in that universe.

It could be said that the only real difference between the deployments of the Enterprise and the Enterprise-D is that the latter had better subspace communications and could maintain realtime contact with Starfleet. Both ships really never seemed more than several days away from a Federation starbase, colony, or member world at high warp.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

All those scientists who freeze their asses off in the Antarctic aren't explorers because, y'know, there's a base!

 

[T'Girl]

it did have a greater sense of been out there and that a great distance lay between in most of the episodes ...

TOS (more than the others) really captured the feeling that they were out there in the darkness.

 

[DEWLine]

I'm with the camp that asks "Can't we have a series in each of the two major Trek'verses? Please?"

I can make room for both in my viewing schedule.

 

[BillJ]

I'm with the camp that asks "Can't we have a series in each of the two major Trek'verses? Please?"

I can make room for both in my viewing schedule.

I'm not sure there's enough financial/audience support for one series much less two.