That's about the size of it. I've been staying quiet about it so far, because it sounds like, "You're no good, kid, so don't even try." And I'm just really, really, really against that type of mentality from anyone on any level in regards to anything, not just Star Trek.
For me, it’s that the Pike storyline was good and a lot of the other stuff hasn’t been. Do I want more Klingon speeches or Ash Tyler rape or eeeevil Georgiou or Burnham crying? No, not really. So let’s go with Pike.
The problem is twofold: 1) People are really into nostalgia right now. So why potentially waste tens of millions of dollars on anything “new”? 2) Trek hasn’t exactly hit it out of the park with new adversaries since the Borg. The Dominion, Kazan, Suliban, S’ona have largely been greeted with collective shrugs from the fan base.
A Pike show would still force the writers to come up with something for him to do (not to mention some new characters for his crew - Number One is virtually a blank slate and he'll need a bridge crew). I can't believe that any new antagonists from this point on would just be necessarily derivative. This is soft science fiction, the only limits are the writer's imaginations, I'm sure they can come up with something that isn't: Proud Warrior People Shifty Espionage People Nazis Greedy Hyper-Capitalist People Hivemind That's Not Even A Hivemind Because A Woman With No Legs Is Controlling Them I also wonder if a big constant antagonist is even necessary in Star Trek. Kirk's encounters with Romulans and Klingons were relatively rare.
Whenever anyone gets started with the "go to the 25th/26th centuries and a new galaxy" routine my attitude is pretty much the same. If there's a legitimate storytelling reason for going there, then by all means do so. But if it's just to provide a different setting for doing the same bog standard Trek tropes that have been done dozens of times, might as well just keep it in the 23rd or 24th centuries in the Alpha Quadrant where the various crossovers and returning alien races won't be as convoluted. As it stands, I suspect a Starfleet starship cruising the Andromeda galaxy in the 25th century is still going to be running into Klingons, Borg, Ferengi and somehow Riker and Deanna Troi are still going to drop in for a visit. We're still going to get variations on the crew exposing their deepest desires like The Naked Time, the Enemy Mine style story of an officer and an alien stuck on a planet needing to cooperate to survive, and so on. The only difference will be the bridge officers spewing newer terms in their technobabble.
That's been the culture since the dawn of storytelling. Star Trek fans like to say they want something different, yet list the 10 most universally beloved episodes/films and they're all extremely Campbellian.
I don't know - looking at the top-rated TOS episodes on imdb: City on the Edge of Forever has no antagonist and the scale of the threat (by the 23rd century, at least) isn't known, beyond that Starfleet apparently doesn't exist. Mirror, Mirror has no real antagonist, and the only threat is that Kirk's party could be stranded. Balance of Terror has the threat of a diplomatic incident and an antagonist who arguably isn't an especially awful person. Same for Space Seed, if you ignore the later film - small-scale threat (just the Enterprise) and antagonist who can be reasoned with or outwitted. The Doomsday Machine has no living antagonist, but the scale of the threat is definitely pretty big. There are plenty of Star Trek episodes with no antagonist/reasonable antagonists and very small scale threats. A little further down imdb's list is The Devil In The Dark, for example, which is an extremely small-scale threat. All of these feel very different (to me at least) from Discovery's multiverse-annihilating Terrans or Control's plan to destroy literally all life everywhere.
Hmmm. According to IMDB, the Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek (weighted by rating and then number of votes) are: 1. The Inner Light (TNG) - 9.4 (4,691 votes) (source) 2. The Best of Both Words, Part I (TNG) - 9.4 (3,421 votes) (source) 3. In the Pale Moonlight (DS9) - 9.4 (2,209 votes) (source) 4. The City on the Edge of Forever (TOS) - 9.3 (3,824 votes) (source) 5. The Best of Both Worlds, Part II (TNG) - 9.3 (3,039 votes) (source) 6. Trials and Tribble-ations (DS9) - 9.3 (2,155 votes) (source) 7. Yesterday's Enterprise (TNG) - 9.2 (3,257 votes) (source) 8. Mirror, Mirror (TOS) - 9.2 (2,973 votes) (source) 9. The Measure of a Man (TNG) - 9.1 (3,229 votes) (source) 10. The Visitor (DS9) - 9.1 (2,182 votes) (source) And Campbellian Storytelling would be The Hero's Journey, according to Wikipedia. So someone who goes on an adventure, has a victory, and comes back transformed or at least bestows something onto whoever they encounter. Some of these episodes fit more comfortably into this storytelling mode than others.
Well, I'll call Sisko "transformed" at the end of "In the Pale Moonlight", alright. I don't really know if I'd call Old Jake a Hero in "The Visitor". He could be in the sense that he un-tethers his father at the end. I'd call that a very unconventional hero in the sense we're thinking about. "Yesterday's Enterprise" kind of works, if you count it as being from Yar's point of view. Otherwise, it's a reset at the end.
Any story ever written can probably be reductively fit into the Hero's Journey if we force it enough. Die Hard, for example - McClane enters the world of adventure (Nakatomi Plaza), wins victories over challenges (shoots Hans' men, bungee jumps off the rooftop with the fire hose, does that thing with the C4 down the elevator) and is transformed by his experience as he returns to his normal life (his relationship with his wife is repaired). I think it says less about storytelling in media than it says about the broadness of the Hero's Journey model, or at least the most simplified interpretation of the model. TVTropes, the trusted source, offers this as the most basic reading: Departure: the Hero leaves the familiar world behind. Initiation: the Hero learns to navigate the unfamiliar world of adventure. Return: the Hero returns to the familiar world. You can boil that down to "unusual events happen to a person", which I mean... yeah. Before anyone tells me I'm being unfair to the theory, I have an English Literature degree which makes me a certified undeniable mastermind when it comes to this model, even though I never studied it, so there.
Given that Star Trek and most TV series used to have to be reset at the end of every episode, returning to the familiar world is an iron bound formula, no way around it. However, there are plenty of stories that don't have the 'Return' at the end. In many stories there is no going back to the familiar world.
Was "To go on simple milk runs with complications" in an early draft of the TOS or TNG opening narration? If so, I guess Roddenberry must have had some reason to drop it.
The hero's journey is literally written into the language of the show: Go boldly on a journey and navigate the unfamiliar stars and seek new things. And every story along the way fits into the template/formula on some level. Every single one. And better than half have a straight-up villain. Most of the other half still revolve around some antagonistic creature or being, if even acting in metaphoric abstract. Star Trek is rooted in adventure. It's about rooting for the characters and cheering when they succeed - usually (but not always) in triumph over a well-defined adversary. That's the heart of Campbellian storytelling and the core takeaway here. Star Trek has always been that and it will always continue to be that. Early Star Trek wasn't cerealized.
The "hero's journey" was literally created as a framework to cover ALL of human stories from all media and all cultures, and find the common elements in them. Of course every story told by humans will have a large similarity to the overall structure and many elements of it - that's literally what it was put together as!