Explore What?

[Dayton3]

It seems that a call among many Trek fans in recent years has been for the franchise to "get back to exploration".

I'm asking the next question:

Explore what?

I get the feeling that Trek fans are not all that interested in space travel in and of itself. The astronomical part of it that is.

If all Trek does is tell stories with a moral through encounters with bumpyheaded aliens of the week, then I'm not that interested.

 

[Marie1]

Need a bit of everything...

I mean, it was the "basis" for ST (though to teach us about humanity)

It has to be fun...

Though we are running out of places, in a sense... well, not technically I guess, but we don't wanna pull a SG:A

John Cook is awesome, and Sev Trek has all ST answers.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

They tried to get "back to exploration" with ENT. And the fans screamed foul and cried "REHASH!!" ENT got better when they had the long story arcs of seasons 3 and 4, so much for exploration.

I think exploration has to have some new element to it otherwise it's going to be the same old ,same old. Sure great writing will still be enjoyable even if it's bumpy heads and morals but it's a rare exploring ep that doesn't remind you of other exploring eps.

Beam down to planet. Meet bumpy heads, engage in some mutually beneficial activities. But! Things are not always as them seem.. something bad happens. Our brave heroes fix the something bad. There is a moral or, if we are daring, an ambiguity. Show over till next week.

 

[TheGodBen]

They tried to get "back to exploration" with ENT. And the fans screamed foul and cried "REHASH!!" ENT got better when they had the long story arcs of seasons 3 and 4, so much for exploration.

I agree with this, they tried to go back to the ways of TOS but people didn't enjoy that. It might have worked if they had better characters on the show, but they were stuck with a bunch of bland people on a bland ship meeting bland aliens. People seemed to love the fourth season because they stopped exploring space and started acting like a prequel.

I think that it is time that they stopped exploring strange new worlds and started exploring the Federation itself. As evidenced by the recent thread where we are debating about how the Federation president is elected, we know so little about the Federation and its workings. I advocate that it's an EU type structure, some think it is like the US, and some think it it closer to the UN. There has been over 700 episodes and we still don't know much about it.

I also think that exploration has one big drawback; little to no recurring charaters. Part of what made DS9 great was that there was around 15 recurring cast members who we got to know almost as well as the main crew. That is something I would like to see again.

 

[JoeZhang]

How much exploration was actually in any series ? Yes they'd came across strange unexpected things but how much purposeful exploration went on?

TOS - years since I've seen it - anyone?

TNG - pretty much stuck to known space

DS9 - you had the delta Q - which I think they never visited again as explorers once the war started?

Ent - never watched it.

Voyager - sorta but that wasn't purposeful either.

 

[btflash]

They tried to get "back to exploration" with ENT. And the fans screamed foul and cried "REHASH!!" ENT got better when they had the long story arcs of seasons 3 and 4, so much for exploration.



.

personally i didnt like the long story arc of the third season but felt that the show was righting itself in season four . unfortunatly it was a little too late to save it.

 

[Marie1]

How much exploration was actually in any series ? Yes they'd came across strange unexpected things but how much purposeful exploration went on?

DS9 - you had the delta Q - which I think they never visited again as explorers once the war started?

You mean the Gamma Quadrant? VOY= Delta Quadrant.

They did explore the GQ a bit in the first... 4 seasons? After that, the GQ came to them...

But they met some new peoples, new places, got a Jemmie ship, did some trade (so we met those peoples)... etc.

 

[Dayton3]

To me it seems like the writers of Trek have forgotten just how interesting space itself can be.

Forget the bumpy headed aliens, the "Paramount Backlot" Planets, and the morality tales.

Doesn't anyone find pulsars, quasars, black holes, naked singularities, Wolf-Rayet stars, neutron stars, radisars, antimatter planets....what have you interesting?

To me, one of the greatest sins of Trek writers is that they managed to make space travel boring.

Heck, Apollo 13 was "we had an explosion then huddled in the LEM for four days freezing" yet Ron Howard managed to make a great movie about it.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Doesn't anyone find pulsars, quasars, black holes, naked singularities, Wolf-Rayet stars, neutron stars, radisars, antimatter planets....what have you interesting?

No. Not as plot lines.

 

[Dayton3]

Doesn't anyone find pulsars, quasars, black holes, naked singularities, Wolf-Rayet stars, neutron stars, radisars, antimatter planets....what have you interesting?

No. Not as plot lines.

Why?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

...otherwise it's going to be the same old ,same old. [/I]

Which describes all of Trek at this point.

 

[trekkerguy]

Doesn't anyone find pulsars, quasars, black holes, naked singularities, Wolf-Rayet stars, neutron stars, radisars, antimatter planets....what have you interesting?

No. Not as plot lines.

Why?

Give us an example plotline using those that's interesting AND entertaining.

I love exploration and charting new worlds and all that, but I have always felt that the exploration in Trek was more about the "Human condition", and the best way to explore character is through peril or conflict.

 

[Dayton3]

No. Not as plot lines.

Why?

Give us an example plotline using those that's interesting AND entertaining.

.

I'm not a writer.

For proof, please check out my story "Playing To Win" in the FanFiction section......

 

[2 of 10]

That was the premise behind Voyager, exploration of the DQ, granted it was not the mission that Voyager was sent out on, but it was what they eventually had to do. And they did it well, most the time. If I remember even though they had the chance to explore the GQ, DS-9 never really did explore it too much, because they were at war it would have been a waste of resources and dangerious to send Federation ship into the GQ at a time of conflict with a species who lived there.

Resistance is Futile

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Doesn't anyone find pulsars, quasars, black holes, naked singularities, Wolf-Rayet stars, neutron stars, radisars, antimatter planets....what have you interesting?

No. Not as plot lines.

Why?

The only way to work these into storytelling is to have something weird or bad happen as a result of getting too close to them, which has been done.

Do you really want a whole story in which the climax is "OMG we found this incredible new element, hydrohippocarbonlitium!!"

 

[All Seeing Eye]

They need to start exploring the Alpha Quadrant again.




<<<<<< in one of these.

 

[trekkerguy]

Or one of these...

<<<<<<

And perhaps with the animated look even. I've actually been quite entertained by the animated Clone Wars series.

 

[btflash]

To me it seems like the writers of Trek have forgotten just how interesting space itself can be.

Forget the bumpy headed aliens, the "Paramount Backlot" Planets, and the morality tales.

Doesn't anyone find pulsars, quasars, black holes, naked singularities, Wolf-Rayet stars, neutron stars, radisars, antimatter planets....what have you interesting?

i do ! i think it would be great !

 

[btflash]

"OMG we found this incredible new element, hydrohippocarbonlitium!!"[/quote]



pffffftttt..... thats easy for you to say.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Personally, I think space exploration is just an umbrella concept to tell a variety of stories. But I mean, if you look at both TOS and TNG, they did a lot of other things besides exploring new worlds and whatever. Space exploration just gives an excuse for our heroes to be out there in the first place.

I think the problem with VOY and ENT was that they actually took the space exploration premise a bit too literally. It became very repetitive after awhile--new planet/new alien, instigate a conflict, resolve, repeat next week. I also think that the idea of "the only Starfleet ship out there" as being creatively limiting. Neither the original Enterprise or the Enterprise-D were ever that far from Federation space (at best, they were exploring the outer rim, IMO), enabling us to occasionally see other Starfleet crews, ships, and outposts. Stories like "The Trouble With Tribbles", "Amok Time," "Conspiracy," and "Paradise Lost"--just to name a very small few--would not have been possible otherwise, IMO...

But one thing I would like to see with space exploration stories are less first contacts that span only one episode. Too many stories like that do eventually result in the "bumpy headed alien of the week" syndrome...