I got that with TNG. It gets easier.
Evidence of SNW being a possible alternate timeline from TOS
It has been ten years. I imagine it isn't going to much change while the current folks are in charge.
Probably not. But, back when I just had TOS and TNG Star Trek had a 50% strike out rate.
So, I'm ok with Star Trek not being for me. I still go back to TOS and Kelvin films and such and action figures to be creative with, and writing little side stories, and such.
The fun is not the hook of the show for me but the beginning of a sandbox.
The whole idea of there being an "official canon" seems hilarious; as if Paramount/CBS have the ability to make something "true" inside the viewer's head. Obviously it's doubly funny with Star Trek because none of it joins up to begin with, a fact that only becomes even more apparent the more it's attempted.
The TOS Pocket Books novels are some of my favourite Star Trek stuff because there's just so many markedly different visions of what the setting and characters could be, most contradict each other (and often the show), and yet most still feel distinctly like Star Trek because the common ethos is there. It'd be wonderful to have that energy back in the TV series.
The TOS Pocket Books novels are some of my favourite Star Trek stuff because there's just so many markedly different visions of what the setting and characters could be, most contradict each other (and often the show), and yet most still feel distinctly like Star Trek because the common ethos is there. It'd be wonderful to have that energy back in the TV series.
If they don't figure out a hook beyond "remember this!" to keep audiences engaged, I'm not sure Star Trek has a future. It won't kill me if it doesn't, but I would be sad as Trek gave so much to me growing up.
It is becoming an empty sandbox as far as I'm concerned. Though some of the great Trek novelists, like @Greg Cox and @Dayton Ward do keep me interested. "Pliable Truths" is a solid novel.
Yet, "but CBS says..." is often the reply when you question whether or not this all fits together.
Star Trek always has a future because I build in to it. Productions having nothing to do with that necessarily.
But, I know I'm unusual in my approach and overthinking at times that keeps me imagining and creating outside of just a screen.
Fans want the suspension of disbelief because often they want a seamless fictional universe to escape from the awful real world. It's why the Star Wars reboot, despite just being a corporate pronouncement, hit a lot of SW fans hard.
Canon/continuity is a relatively new thing. Our mythologies were inherently contradicting and people just retold the myths with changes etc. over time and accepted that. As literature became more widespread and especially with the internet, people wanted more cohesion. Conan Doyle struggled to keep his Holmes stories consistent (good luck figuring out how many Moriarty brothers there are and which one is named James) and Tolkien didn't finish the Silmarillion in his lifetime due to all the differences it had with LOTR (his son Chris took a lot of "editing liberties" with the Silmarillion we ended up getting).
It's surprising how Marvel comics are still going on under 60 decades of continuity. Star Trek always kept the games and books non-canon, which prevented them from having a situation like SW where it ultimately needed to be rebooted.
Star Trek the franchise has over 1,000 episodes and 14 movies. It desperately needs to be rebooted. Desperately. There is nowhere else for it to go. Just constantly going back to better times is not a viable answer for this franchise anymore.
Someone, at some point, is going to have to rip the band-aids off and commit to the franchise moving forward.
And I would wish them luck. If they don't want to build upon what's already been established, then I won't be interested. The lore and the backstory are a major part of my love for the franchise.
I simply don't understand declarations like these. A reboot is a new universe to explore, a new way to look at the characters and something that can be built with a mind to the actual people Trek needs to survive. Could it stink? Sure. But I would at least sample it to see if it was to my liking. All the things that I know about 60's Trek would still be there. No one is going to sneak into my house to take my beatup copy of the Spaceflight Chronology or Worlds of the Federation.
As far as I'm concerned, Star Trek has been rebooted TWICE. I won't even count TNG which was arguably a reboot already (the warp slowdown for example where the center of the galaxy suddenly wasn't reachable like it was in TAS).
The Kelvin trilogy doesn't seem to be getting past being a trilogy.
Disco/SFA went farther than any Trek had into the future in an attempt to give Trek a clean slate without worrying about continuity that was now centuries ago in-universe (not unlike TNG to be honest). While not an actual continuity reboot, it is for all intents and purposes a reboot honestly. The Burn era was so despised and now Starfleet Academy has been canceled.
It's not enough for Trek to be rebooted to survive, what the reboot does can't just be a retread (like Kelvin arguably was) and also can't be based off an unpopular premise either (immature cadets running around rebuilding the Federation)
The Kelvin trilogy doesn't seem to be getting past being a trilogy.
Disco/SFA went farther than any Trek had into the future in an attempt to give Trek a clean slate without worrying about continuity that was now centuries ago in-universe (not unlike TNG to be honest). While not an actual continuity reboot, it is for all intents and purposes a reboot honestly. The Burn era was so despised and now Starfleet Academy has been canceled.
It's not enough for Trek to be rebooted to survive, what the reboot does can't just be a retread (like Kelvin arguably was) and also can't be based off an unpopular premise either (immature cadets running around rebuilding the Federation)
If it's a new universe to explore, then call it something else.
Yeah, that clean slate didn't last long as they quickly started falling back on things from prior series.
Why? Why can't Star Trek have a second act in the 21st century? Why does it have to be beholden to the 1960's vision of the future for the rest of its existence?
Star Trek has hardly been "beholden to the 60s". Every show has been a product of the era it was released. And the building of the larger mythology has always been part of the enjoyment for me. The last time they started over with the Kelvin movies, I had very little interest but saw them anyway and wound up being very disappointed. I don't see that changing with another reboot.
The franchise has always been beholden to TOS. Far more than even TNG.
As for the rest, fair enough. For me, I won't walk away until I've sampled a rebooted Trek (if it ever happens).
Hell, some people (many times obnoxiously) call ENT "George W. Bush Trek" because it carries some stink of being a pro-torture, anti-terrorism series, right down to characters like Trip reminding some fans of W. Each decade places its stamp on its Trek series and films, and DS9 definitely feels like the post-Cold War and Bill Clinton '90s and ENT with the Xindi Arc does have a very strong War on Terror feel that screams, "this show was made when Google was taking off and iPods were created."
Which i'm fine with. If every part of the franchise feels like TOS it's not going to be a good sign.
Which i'm fine with. If every part of the franchise feels like TOS it's not going to be a good sign.
TNG was NOT 'beholden to the 60s' <--- And in fact that was one of my issues because I wanted something that felt like an actual continuation and no, in 1987, TNG wasn't it.
We've essentially had at least two reboots of Trek already, though. The Kelvin movies were a brand new continuity, with new versions of the original characters, and DSC and SNW have essentially rebooted the 23rd Century era again, with new versions of Spock, Pike, Uhura, and others.
Heck, you could even make an argument that the TOS movies and TNG were both soft reboots of Trek, as they certainly rewrote a lot of the existing history up until then.
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